


The House on the Hill

by BonitaBreezy



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Haunted Mansion (2003)
Genre: Ghosts, Haunted Houses, I'll let you make of that what you will, M/M, Murder, Possession, but nothing graphic or depicted in-story, don't let it freak you out too much, even though it's c/c you hardly get any of their perspective, it's kind of like a make your own adventure book but with shipping, it's literally a ghost story so that's why there's major character death, it's mostly Sam's perspective, mentions of incest that may or may not be actual incest, there are allusions to different relationships among the cap 2 quadrangle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-18
Updated: 2015-08-18
Packaged: 2018-04-15 09:23:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4601514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BonitaBreezy/pseuds/BonitaBreezy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If there was anything that the people of Hurley found more interesting than the rich family in the mansion on the hilltop, it was the foul murder of the last Master of the house.<br/>or: the Haunted Mansion au that no one asked for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The House on the Hill

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this almost a year ago and then just let it sit in my drafts folder forever. I opened it again a few weeks ago and decided that, come hell or high water, I was going to finish it. I'm not in love with the end, but I do think it's good enough to get posted, so here it is. It was entirely self-beta'd and so there's probably mistakes in a few places, but I did my best to catch them. Sorry.  
> As always, my eternal gratitude to Kees for letting me bounce my ideas off of her and helping guide me in the right direction when I need it.

Barton Manor had once been the grandest mansion in Hurley, a small and quiet hamlet in upstate New York that had plenty of historical value, but only one road in and out of town.

The manor sat on top of a hill off to the left of Hurley’s main stretch, attached to the town by only a small, winding, and vaguely treacherous road that began behind a tall and elegant wrought-iron gate.  Still, despite its distance, Barton Manor had once been the pride and joy of the town.

It was a beautiful brick mansion done in the Dutch gothic style popular in the Hudson River Valley where it sat, and in its prime it had certainly been a sight to see.  The bricks were a light tan color that caught the sun nicely, when it could be bothered to shine, and the conservatory at the eastern end had windows that could be seen sparkling all the way from the bottom of the hill.  The four chimneys could be seen puffing merrily during the winter, and often times the children of the manor could be seen playing behind the stone banister that surrounded the grounds of the Manor at the very top.  

People would often point Barton Manor out to travelers passing through, as if they could possibly miss it.  The grand mansion was the focus of much pride and gossip for the town’s people, and it continued to be so long after the Barton line was cut short and the Manor was left to rot on the hilltop.

If there was anything that the people of Hurley found more interesting than the rich family in the mansion on the hilltop, it was the foul murder of the last Master of the house.

* * *

 

“Wow, isn’t that a piece of work.” Natasha leaned her head through the gap between the front seats of the car to get a better look at the mansion standing vigil on the hilltop as they drove past it.  The overgrown grass, ungroomed trees, and general air of stillness made it clear that the house had long-since been abandoned.  

There were a couple places where it was obvious that someone had thrown rocks through the glass of the conservatory, and the wrought-iron fence they passed was hanging slightly crooked on it’s hinges and chained shut with a padlock.  Despite the obvious signs of disrepair, the architecture had stood the test of time, and for the most part it was still a beautiful building.

“That’s the old Barton Manor,” Sam explained, passing the mansion and turning left onto a small side street. “It’s definitely haunted.”

“Bull shit,” Bucky said immediately, though he was now craning his neck to look out the back window of the car.

“Seriously, man,” Sam insisted, shooting him a dark look. “It’s definitely haunted.  No one has lived up there for at least a hundred years, but every once in a while you can hear music coming down the hill, or you can see lights on up in the cupola.”

“So sometimes kids go up there and mess around, you mean,” Steve said, sharing an amused grin with Bucky.  Of their little group of friends, Sam was by far the most sensible, so it was actually a little satisfying to learn he believed in ghosts.

“No, definitely not,” Sam disagreed. “No one goes up there and comes back down alive.”  He said it so seriously and with such conviction that his three friends couldn’t help but exchange bemused glances.  

“What, you mean people have been murdered up there?” Natasha asked, looking more fascinated than the subject of murder should make anyone.

“Yeah,” Sam insisted, his voice serious and almost like he regretted bringing it up. “Every couple decades or so, some people decide to go up there and prove that it’s not haunted, and then they all come back down dead the same way.”

Steve twisted around in his seat to look back at the mansion.  It was overgrown, but it certainly didn’t look haunted.  At least, not like haunted things always looked in movies, with the boarded up windows and bats hanging around, all bleak and dark.

“What do you mean, ‘the same way’?” Bucky asked, still sounding scornful at the idea of ghosts and murder.

“I mean,” Sam said, glancing back to fix him with a glare, “that there’s always three of them, and they all die the _same way_ , every time.  One is stabbed to death, one is hanged, and one suddenly breaks out in a crazy case of tuberculosis.”

“You don’t just suddenly die of tuberculosis,” Natasha insisted, rolling her eyes. “It’s a disease that kills you slowly over time.”

“And that’s why it’s so weird!” Sam insisted. “Listen, you ask anyone who grew up here, we all know the story.  They say the last Master of Barton Manor was stabbed to death by his manservant the night of his wedding…”

“Ooh,” Natasha said, perking up with interest again. “Why?”

“They say it’s because the manservant was in love with him and decided that if he couldn’t have him, then no one would,” Sam informed her. “But that’s not _the point_.  The point is, he got stabbed to death in his bed, right?  And then the manservant hung himself up in the cupola right after.  Two years later, the Master’s widow died of TB.”

Sam flicked his blinker and turned into the driveway of a nice colonial style house and turned off the car.  No one moved to leave it, all hanging on Sam’s words and staring up at the mansion that they could still see looming over the hamlet.

“Everyone who has ever gone up there has come down dead the same way.”

* * *

 

That night found the four friends gathered in the living room watching a mindless action movie as they worked on digesting the dinner Sam’s mother had made them.  Natasha and Bucky were sprawled out on the couch, their feet in each other’s laps, and Steve was on the floor in front of them, his head leaned back against the seat cushions as he stared almost blankly at the TV.  Sam had claimed the large La-Z-Boy in the corner and was curled up in it like a cat.  He sat up and yawned a bit, and then started to get to his feet.

“I want ice cream,” he announced. “Anyone else want anything?”

“I want to go to the mansion,” Natasha spoke up, and Sam went pale.

“Are you out of your mind?” he demanded, crossing his arms over his chest.  Natasha just bared her teeth at him in a fierce smile and peeked out the living room window towards the dark hill top, where the mansion could just barely be seen by the light of the moon.

“I just want to see what the big deal is,” Natasha shrugged, looking completely unperturbed by Sam’s reaction.

“It could be pretty cool,” Steve agreed, a grin spreading over his face at the idea of getting up to mischief. “I bet there’s all sorts of cool things that just got left in there when they closed it up.”

“Like ghosts and murder!” Sam interjected, seeming to realize that he was swiftly losing this argument.

“I don’t know guys,” Bucky said slowly, and Sam nodded frantically in support.. “I mean, it is trespassing, and it could be dangerous getting up that hill in the dark…”

“But think of all the great things there will be to look at up there,” Natasha wheedled, and Steve nodded in support. “We’ll all have our phones, we can use the flashlights to make sure we get up and down safely.”

“Is your phone going to save you from a ghost killer?” Sam demanded, still stubbornly holding his ground, even though he could see Bucky’s resolve crumbling.

“There’s no such thing as ghosts, Sam,” Natasha sighed. “If you come with us, I’ll prove it to you.”

“Oh, yeah, sure,” Sam snapped, glaring. “Come with you, okay.  I’ve seen the horror movies, Natasha, I know the black guy always dies first.  Come with us, she says.  Right.”

“Well, if you don’t want to go, then stay here,” Natasha shrugged. “But I’m going.”

“Me too!” Steve interjected quickly, looking far too delighted about the idea of sneaking into a creepy, old, potentially haunted mansion.

Bucky looked torn for a long moment, and then his face crumpled apologetically at Sam.

“I should go with them to make sure they don’t get in trouble,” he said. “But you don’t have to come if you don’t want to, we won’t make fun of you for it.”

“The hell we won’t,” Natasha snorted, slipping her feet into her boots.

“You make fun of me all you want,” Sam grumbled. “If you come back without a knife in your chest, that is.  I’m warning you, if you go up there, you are gonna die, guys.  Seriously, please don’t do it.”

“We’ll be fine,” Natasha sighed impatiently. “We’ll be back by midnight.”

“Fine!” Sam snapped. “I’m gonna go get some ice cream, you all can go up there and get yourselves killed.”

The three friends slipped into the coats and headed out the door, followed into the night by Sam’s frustrated declaration of, _“White people.”_

* * *

 

“So how are we supposed to get past the gate?” Steve asked when they got to the gate.  He poked at the old-fashioned padlock hanging on rusted chains wound around the fence and watched it swing with the momentum.

Natasha glanced up at the top of the fence, frowning when she saw that it tapered off into spikes.  It would be possible to climb over them, but it wouldn’t be easy.  And anyway, it probably wasn’t worth the risk of getting stabbed and having to get a tetanus shot.  Instead, she focused on the padlock.

It was an old one, but not as old as the house.  It had probably been put on later to deter teenagers from going up to the manor to get drunk or break in.  It was one of the small gold locks that had master keys, so it was cheap and probably wouldn’t be that hard to break.  She scanned the ground, shining around with her phone’s flashlight, until she found a decent sized chunk of rock.

A few well-placed hits, and the lock was broken off and the chain was sliding around the bars of the fence.  Bucky grinned mischievously at her, but Steve looked a little less sure, probably because of the “breaking” part of breaking and entering.  She raised an eyebrow at him, and he scowled at her a bit, but straightened his shoulders and accepted her silent challenge.  

The gate screeched loudly when they pushed it, so they only opened it as far as it needed to be for Steve, the biggest of them, to slip through.  The road leading up the hill wasn’t paved, and it wasn’t very wide, either.  The farther up the hill they got, the more overgrown the road got, until they were trekking through calf-high grass, hoping they wouldn’t break their ankles or step on anything that might bite them.

“Hey, guys, look at that,” Bucky called from where where he’d run up ahead of them.  The closer they got to the mansion, the more enthusiastic he was about their little adventure.  Natasha quickened her pace to catch up with him and came to such a sudden stop when she saw what he’d found that Steve ran into her back.

“Oh, wow,” he said, and Natasha couldn’t help but agree.  The entire back of the hill, the side facing away from Hurley, was a cemetery.  Tombstones of all shapes and sizes, weathered by age, poked out of the overgrown grass all the way down the hill.  A large mausoleum stood on the opposite side from them at the top of the hill, placed back as far from the house as it could get without being on an incline.

“We should go look at that,” she breathed.  The mausoleum was gorgeous, made of the same brick as the mansion and in the same sort of style.  The front door was bolted shut, but she thought they might be able to get it open if they all pulled together.

“Okay, I draw the line at breaking into a mausoleum in the middle of the night outside of a house that may or may not be haunted.  It’s disrespectful,” Steve insisted, crossing his arms over his chest and frowning.

“Oh, come on, Steve,” Natasha wheedled. “Don’t be a baby.”  It wasn’t like she wanted to go dig up graves or anything.  She just wanted to see what the inside looked like.

“No, Natasha,” he grumbled, and as if the sky was reflecting his mood, there was a sudden flash of lightning and a rumble of thunder overhead. “See! Even God is telling you not to!”

Natasha rolled her eyes but reluctantly agreed to leave them mausoleum alone, and that’s when the sky opened up and rain started to pour down on them.

“Oh shit!” Bucky grumbled, dashing for the covered front porch of the mansion.  Natasha chased after him, but unfortunately the porch wasn’t very large and barely covered the three of them from the sudden onslaught of rain.

“It wasn’t supposed to rain tonight, was it?” Steve asked, frowning up at the sky as if it personally offended him.

“I don’t know that it matters if it was supposed to or not,” Bucky pointed out. “Since it is.”

“Okay, so, now what?” Natasha asked, perfectly aware that it was her fault they were up there in the rain in the first place.

“Now we wait, I guess,” Steve said, jiggling the doorknob of the door hopefully. “It’s not like we can get inside.  It’s…”

The lock clicked and the door slid open easily and silently.

“...Locked.”

“So, uh,” Bucky said, shifting uncomfortably. “That was weird, right?  I mean, definitely weird and kind of ghost-y?”

“Yeah, definitely,” Steve agreed, releasing the handle of the door like it had bit him. “That door was locked, I felt it.”

“Well clearly it wasn’t, because it’s open,” Natasha sighed impatiently. Her jeans were starting to soak through, and she really had no desire to spend the rest of the night sopping wet. “Come, on, let’s go.”

She started forward, but Bucky and Steve didn’t move, looking at the door and then at her uncertainly.  She rolled her eyes.  What babies.

“Fine,” she said. “Stay out here in the rain.  I’m going inside.”

She walked through the door and left them outside to get soaked.

* * *

 

Skye jumped in surprise when Jemma quite suddenly appeared in front of her, biting her lip.  Skye smiled at her, because Jemma was always worrying about something, and sometimes it was easier to get her to calm down if she made sure to look extra welcoming.  Jemma spared her a tiny smile and straightened her skirt nervously before she spoke.

“There are people outside,” Jemma said, and immediately Skye felt conflicted.  It had been quite a bit of time since people had last come up, and she wasn’t sure if she was supposed to feel relieved about that or not.  She didn’t want them to get involved, but she also didn’t want to be stuck forever, and there was only one way out.

“What should we do?” Skye asked her, flitting down the hall and peeking over the railing of the grand staircase.  Now that Jemma had mentioned it, she could hear voices from outside.

“There are people outside!” Fitz said, appearing next to them with a wild look on his face.

“We know,” Jemma hissed. “Keep quiet, won’t you?  Maybe if no one else hears…”

But then lightning struck and thunder shook the windows, and they knew it was too late.  The people would be coming inside, and they wouldn’t be leaving.  Surely enough, a minute later the voices grew louder, as if they’d come up on the porch to escape the rain.  Skye grabbed her friends’ wrists and pulled them away from the banister, far enough back that they probably wouldn’t be seen, but not so far that _they_ couldn’t see.

The door swung open easily, the same way it had for them that night so long ago, and Skye’s fingers tightened around her friends’ arms as they listened to the people outside bicker for a moment before a red-headed woman stepped through the door.  She got halfway across the entrance hall when the familiar red ball of light slammed into her chest and it all started again.

Skye could feel Jemma trembling and tried her best to comfort her friend while she watched the red-headed woman collapse to the floor and her friends cry out in surprise and rush inside to help her.  There was no helping her, of course, and they only sealed their own fates by crossing the threshold.  As soon as they were through two more balls of light rushed past, a dark blue one from up in the direction of the cupola and pale purple one from the Master’s bedroom down the hall, and slammed into them.

It all happened the same way it always had, as the three strangers lay collapsed on the floor in the entrance hall.  All the sconces lit up at once, and the large chandelier above the entrance hall began to glow with warm, flickering light as the candles lit themselves, one by one.  The Manor was alive again, for the night, and ready to play out the death of its last master once again.

Yelena rose first, as she always did, though the redheaded woman that she wore kept a blank expression on her face as she walked out of the entrance hall towards the first floor corridor to take her place in her rooms, the same place she always started out in.  Skye felt Fitz tense next to her, like he was afraid that Yelena would possess him again, though he was far past being in any state where that would be possible.

The large blonde man that Phil was wearing stood up second and headed towards the master’s bedroom, followed quickly by Clint, in the body of the dark-haired man, who hurried off towards the East wing, and the study.

“I hate watching this all happen again,” Jemma whispered forlornly. “I really do.”

“Well, there’s nothing we can do now,” Fitz sighed. “It’s too late.  The story has started, and it’s got to play itself out.”

“I just wish there was some way we could stop it or change it,” Jemma insisted. “Madame Leota said…”

“I know what Madame Leota said!” Fitz snapped, and Skye tried not to get angry with him because she knew he was just feeling guilty. “Madame Leota’s been saying the same thing for a hundred years, probably since even before that, and it’s never changed, not once.  It always happens the same way.  But that doesn’t mean I have to watch it this time.”

With that, Fitz lost his form and zipped away quickly as a little ball of light, dashing through the walls and up to the attic, where he liked to go when he wanted to be alone.  The Hatbox Ghost lived up there, but he was mostly quiet and let Fitz be.

“I just wish that we could do something,” Jemma repeated quietly. “Sometimes I swear I can still feel the rope around my neck.”

Skye rubbed her chest with a frown, remembering the way it had felt when the knife had ripped through her. “I know what you mean,” she said softly, and then lead Jemma away from the Entrance Hall.  It was probably better if they didn’t watch this time.

* * *

 

Sam Wilson sat in his mother’s living room, determinedly not looking at the clock or out the window.  He was way more invested in _the Expendables 2_ than he was in what his stupid, crazy friends were doing up on the Hilltop of Death.  Way more.

Sam huffed a breath and looked at the melted, syrupy remnants of his ice cream and considered getting more.  As he pushed the bowl away from himself to discourage temptation, he realized that he had actually no idea why a priest was killing people, and that he really didn’t care that much.  He scowled at the TV, and then at his bowl, and finally, at the clock, which read 11:32.

They still had 28 minutes, and then they’d be back.  They’d be fine.  Totally fine.

If he had looked out the window, he might have been more worried, due to the light coming from the cupola.

* * *

 

Jemma knew she should just leave it alone.  They’d been residents of the Manor for a very long time, and no matter how many people got caught in it’s trap, they’d never been able to make a difference.  It always played out just the same, and every time it got harder and harder to watch.  

But she’d always had a bit of a hard time just leaving things be.

She crept down the stairs, away from where Skye had directed her in hopes of getting her mind off of things.  The ghost of the groundkeeper’s dog liked to sniff around the hallways up there, and Jemma often found that ruffling his fur and kissing his nose cheered her up.  But tonight, it hadn’t been enough to cover up the feeling of guilt roiling in her stomach.

She’d left Skip to his exploring, and now she wasn’t quite sure where to go.  She could go to Madame Leota, of course, but since the curse was active all she would want to talk about was breaking it, and Jemma had heard it all before.  She also considered going outside to the cemetery and visiting Prudence Pock to help her with her poetry, but she found she really had no desire to pick her way through the hundreds of rowdy ghosts that had surely risen for the night.

Jemma bit her lip and glanced around, knowing that what she was about to do was honestly what she’d been planning to do all along, even if she didn’t want to admit it. She couldn’t not watch.

She made her way towards the Master’s office, creeping along as if she had any weight that might make the floorboards creek beneath her feet.  The Master, riding along in the body of that dark-haired man, was seated at the dusty, cobweb covered desk with his back to the conservatory that hadn’t hosted any sort of life in over a hundred years.  He was studying the desktop and miming writing, as if there were a pen in his hand and paper in front of him.

Jemma remembered what it was like to be possessed.  It was almost sort of vacant, like she _was_ that person, but at the same time she was herself, just barely, in the back of her brain.  Not enough to take control, or to even really have conscious thought, but enough that afterward, she remembered every second of it.  And those spirits, they always saw the Manor as if had been when they were alive.

When she’d been possessed, it had seemed that the place was bright, clean, and filled with staff going about their jobs.  The conservatory had been filled with gorgeous, exotic plants, and everything had been where and how Phillip had expected it to be.  As if it really was that day all over again.  

Jemma knew, having seen it from the outside more than once, that nothing was as it seemed to be under the possession.  The house stayed dark, but for the light that came out of the cupola.  The staff had all packed up and left after the Manor had been closed down, so their ghosts were not there to participate in conversations, but that made no difference to those who were playing out a story.

Jemma jumped when Phil, in the body of the big blonde man, knocked on the door right next to her.  He didn’t see her, of course.  They never did.  Still, she remembered the way a racing heart felt in that moment, standing so close.  She watched as Clint looked up and smiled warmly, calling for Phil to come in, and watched as he did, closing the door in her face behind him.  She frowned then, trying to decide if she should go in.  She knew what would happen.  She’d seen it a hundred times.  By all logic, she shouldn’t even bother with it.  But she felt oddly compelled to, and she took an unnecessary breath and stepped through the door.

* * *

 

Clint settled back in his chair, leaning into the light of the sun that filtered through the green glass of the conservatory behind him.  Phil stayed near the doorway, looking tense and uncomfortable.  He was a very confident and sure man, Phil Coulson, and giving any sort of indication of discomfort was uncommon for him.  Clint’s face settled into a frown.

“Are you alright, Mr. Coulson?” he asked, keeping his tone light and distant in that professional way they were so good at using in front of others.

“I…” Phil started, twisting his hands together before moving them behind his back to present a more professional front. “I do not know, Master Barton.”

Even though he’d used formal titles first, having Phil call him ‘Master’ when it was just the two of them alone made him incredibly aware of the aching gulf between them.  They were farther away from each other now than they had ever been before, and he didn’t like knowing that it was his fault.

“Phil,” he said, quietly. “You know that I must.”

“I know,” Phil answered, looking down at the floor before lifting his head up high. “I know you have your duty, Clint.  I respect that you must go through with your marriage to Miss Belova.  I just don’t think that I can be content with it.”

“I would marry you,” Clint told him quietly. “If I could, I would marry you.  But I can’t.  And I must have an heir.  Barney is long dead and he left no children.  I’m the last of the Barton line, and it is my responsibility to have a son.  But that doesn’t mean that things must change between us.”

He pushed up from his chair and rounded the desk so that he could reach out to Phil.  His manservant didn’t seem particularly inclined to reach out in the way that Clint had hoped, so he tilted his head just slightly and pouted.  Phil stared him down for a few long seconds and then he smiled reluctantly and allowed Clint to draw him nearer, wrapping an arm around his waist.  

“I don’t love Yelena, you know that,” Clint told him softly. “I love you.  I’ve always loved you, and I will always love you.  I will marry Yelena, we will have a son, and she will live a very comfortable life here, but it will always be you who has my heart.”

“But she will share your bed,” Phil muttered.

“And I will share yours,” Clint promised him.  They’d had the same discussion time and time again, but Clint understood Phil’s reluctance to give in to it.  It wasn’t really fair, for Clint to ask him to always be a mistress on the side, never able to move on from the manor and find someone that could be all his, that he wouldn’t have to share with a wife.  Clint knew he was being selfish, and yet he couldn’t bear to let Phil go.

“By all rights I should leave this place,” Phil confessed, making Clint’s heart clench in fear. “I should turn in my resignation and pack my bags, find a new master to serve.  But we both know that I won’t.”

Clint breathed a sigh of relief and pressed forward to kiss Phil, a gentle reminder of what they had combined with a ‘thank you’.  Phil melted against him, his hands sliding up Clint’s chest and winding around his shoulders.  They kissed for a long while, both unwilling to let the other go, embracing like they were afraid they might never see each other again.  It was a ridiculous notion, of course, because Phil was still in Clint’s employ and he would continue to be, but change was in the air and it made them both clingy.

Finally, Phil pulled away, taking a few steps back and clearing his throat a bit awkwardly.  Clint couldn’t hold down his affectionate grin, watching the man try and slip back into a professional persona, refusing to let either of them get too excited in the middle of the day, when there was still so much to be done.

“It is getting to be late in the day, Master Barton,” Phil told him finally. “You still must greet the guests and dress before the ceremony at half past three, and Madame Leota requested a moment of your time as well.”

“Guests,” Clint scoffed. “Half of New York Society will be here, as if a small family affair was too much to ask.”

“To be fair, Sir,” Phil offered, “Neither you nor Miss Belova have much family to speak of, and that would have created for a rather poor amount of festivity.”

“I’d much prefer it,” Clint admitted with a sigh. “You know how I hate entertaining the masses from the City.”

“Yes, but imagine if your only wedding guests were the staff and Miss Belova’s off-putting uncle?”

Clint shuddered at the idea.  Yelena’s uncle was an old Russian man with a dark scowl and a disconcerting sort of disposition that always had Clint feeling uneasy.  He had been a friend of Clint’s father, though, and after Yelena’s previous husband had been unfortunately crushed to death by his horse, she had had trouble finding a man who was willing to marry her.  Not many men were interested in gaining a spoiled bride with such a small dowry.  

Clint, though, had jumped at the chance.  If rumor were to ever break out that he did not share a marriage bed with his wife as he should, it would be much easier to insinuate that it was due to her lack of purity before she had come to him.  People would already view their marriage as one of pity for a ruined girl in the prime of her life.  Clint had no trouble using that view to his advantage.  He would do his duty, get Yelena with child, and provide for her as a husband should for a wife, but she would never be his lover.

“I suppose it’s far too late to worry about it now, at any rate,” Clint sighed. “I’ll see to Madame Leota first. Can you check on the preparations for me, make sure everything is running smoothly?”

“Very well,” Phil said with a polite nod.  He turned to go, but Clint grabbed his elbow and pulled him back around again so that he could kiss him one more time.

“I love you,” he said, close enough that their breaths mingled.

“And I you,” Phil responded quietly.  He reached up, straightened Clint’s cravat, and then gave a short bow and left the room.  Clint waited for a few moments, sternly reminding himself that he was doing the right thing and that he had responsibilities and duties that far outweighed his own personal wants, before he set off to find Madame Leota.

* * *

 

It was 12:15.

They said they’d be back at midnight and it was 12:15.  A reasonable mind might just assume that they’d lost track of time, or that they’d misjudged how long it would take to get down the hill and back to Sam’s house.  These were the excuses that Sam was frantically telling himself so that he could get the images of his friends horrible deaths out of his brain.

They were fine.  Even though all of their phones were going directly to voicemail and they weren’t answering their texts and even though it was _twelve-fifteen_ , they were probably fine.  They were probably even late on purpose, trying to freak Sam out because his friends were _assholes_.   He turned to look out the window, wondering if he’d be able to spot them coming down the dark street.  He didn’t see his friends, but he did see that the cupola of Barton Manor was lit up against the night sky.  He swallowed harshly, looking up at the creepy old house.  Lightning flashed ominously behind the mansion, followed quickly by a huge crack of thunder.  For just a moment, as the lightning flashed, he swore he saw the silhouette of a man hanging from his neck through the windows of the cupola, but then the lightning was gone and so were the terrifying shadows.

He sucked in a breath, scared for and pissed of at his friends in equal measure.  Everyone in Hurley knew about the Manor.  They all knew it was no joke, and that it should be left alone.  Even the rebellious teeangers didn’t dare venture up onto the hilltop anymore.  But his stupid friends had decided it would be a great plan.  He regretted telling them the story, because he’d no doubt fueled Natasha’s desire to go up there.  If he’d just kept his stupid mouth shut, they’d all be sitting in the living room right now, and he wouldn’t be considering doing the dumbest thing he’d ever do in his whole life.

* * *

 

“Ah, Mr. Coulson, you’re just in time! Try this!”

Phil jerked back in surprise as a spoon was thrust into his face.  He didn’t know what he expected, since it wasn’t uncommon for the cook to shove food in his face every time he entered the kitchen, clamoring for approval.

“Miss Lewis, you know I dislike it when you do that,” he sighed.

“Very sorry sir,” she said quickly, with a quick dismissal to her tone that suggested she thought him to be unreasonable. “Only that I do believe I’ve just perfected the glaze for the pheasants and I need a cultured opinion.”

She shot a dubious look at the rest of the kitchen staff, as if to insinuate that their palates were clearly not refined enough for her genius.  Phil rolled his eyes, but allowed her to brandish her spoon at him again.  He blinked in surprise at the taste of the glaze, even though he should have known by that point to never doubt Darcy’s culinary prowess.

“That is quite good,” he admitted. “Rich flavor, with a hint of citrus...orange, is it?”

“Right you are,” Darcy confirmed. “I think it adds a very nice tang, don’t you?”

“Indeed,” Phil agreed. “How go the rest of the preparations?”

“All’s right on schedule,” she confirmed. “The cake came out beautifully, if I do say so.”

She nodded towards an atrociously large fruitcake set on the countertop across the kitchen from them.  It was decorated in ornate scrolls of white frosting, which must have taken hours to do considering the size of the thing.  The top was clustered with fragrant orange blossoms, starting thinly in one corner and stretching out over the cake to drape artfully over the opposite side.

“You’ve outdone yourself,” Phil agreed, and Darcy beamed at him.

“The Groom’s cake is done as well,” she said, nodding towards a much smaller cake that was frosted in much darker tones.  The Bride’s cake is still in the oven, but it’s not too late for me to slip something extra into it, if you like.”

She said it as a joke, but he could see the traces of seriousness in her eyes when she looked at him, and he frowned disapprovingly at her.

“I know that you did not suggest we poison the Master’s wife,” Phil told her sternly, pitching his voice low.

“Of course not, Sir!” Darcy insisted. “I only thought you might appreciate the benefits of Master Barton’s continued bachelorship.”

She cast him a knowing glance that at once had his heart pounding with fear and his face going slightly pink with a blush. How could she possibly know?  They made sure to be so very careful.  He did not say any of this to Darcy.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said instead, keeping his voice mild and disinterested. “Master Barton’s marital status hardly makes a difference to me.”

“Of course not,” Darcy said brightly. “But keep in mind that the maids know everything, Mr. Coulson.”

“The maids would do well to stick to their duties and not spread salacious gossip,” Phil told her sharply. “Master Barton’s reputation could be irreparably damaged if such talk were to get out.”

Darcy seemed to realize that she had overstepped her bounds because the grin slid off her face and she nodded at him, bowing her head just slightly to acknowledge his authority over her.

“Of course you’re right, sir,” she said quickly. “I meant no harm.  I’ve already spoken to the maids, and scolded them for making up such terrible lies.  I promised them they would have to deal with you if they said another word on the subject.”

“And they will,” Phil told her curtly. “I’ll leave you to your preparations.  Remember, the reception feast will begin promptly at four o’ clock.”

“Yessir,” she said, and he fled from the kitchen as quickly as he could, his heart pounding fearfully in his chest.  If the maids knew, then any number of the staff could know.  He hoped that, despite her ill-advised teasing, Darcy had managed to strike fear in the hearts of the maids with her words.  They were only young girls, ranging from ages twelve to sixteen, mostly.  They knew how to conduct themselves, of course, and that the secrets of the house were to be kept, but they were still just young girls.  A wrong word spoken to the wrong ear could destroy everything, and not for the first time Phil felt a stab of guilt.

He loved Clint more than anything else he could think of, but he would never forgive himself if their involvement were to cause Clint any harm.  Surely, if they were found out, Clint would lose everything, perhaps even his life.  Phil hated to think that he could be partly responsible for that, but he was too weak and in love to walk away and spare them both the trouble. He would be Clint’s as long as Clint wanted him to be, because he was powerless to do anything else.

* * *

 

Clint found Madame Leota in, of all places, the cupola.  His great-grandfather had had the cupola added to the top of the house because he enjoyed looking over their lands and watching the trees sway in the winds from above.  The village of Hurley had sprung up around Barton Manor over time, but the view was no less great for it.  

The cupola wasn’t a large space, but the walkway around the edges of it provided just enough room for two men to stand abreast, if they didn’t mind their shoulders touching.  He and Phil had spent many a night up there, looking down over the tiny little village at the bottom of the hill and talking about how their lives would be when Clint joined the army and they left the Manor.  That, of course, had been before Barney died and Clint had inherited the estate.  Many things had changed since their days of being young men, dreaming of living somewhere far away, where they could be together and no one would know.  Phil had laughed and bet that Clint would have trouble living away from the creature comforts and servants he’d grown up with, but Clint had thought it would be worth it to cook his own meals and “rough it”.  Phil had pointed out that, as an officer in the army, he would hardly be roughing it, but then he did enjoy being a spoilsport.

It had been nearly ten long years since Barney’s death, and since they had realized that they would not be leaving the Manor after all.  Clint had been reluctant to accept his role at first, rebellious and angry at his brother for leaving him a legacy he had no desire to uphold.  Phil had set him straight, though, had yelled at him and called him a spoiled, selfish brat who had no awareness of his own privilege and luck in the lot of life.  Though he hadn’t felt particularly lucky, to be a man who loved another man in a world where such things were considered a perversion, he had buckled down and stepped up to his mantle.  He wouldn’t have been able to do it without Phil there to hold him up, and without Madame Leota to give him indispensable advice.

No one, Clint included, really knew where Madame Leota had come from.  She had always been around, as far as he knew, though she hadn’t really seemed to age that much from his memories of childhood.  She was a gypsy ( _Roma_ , she often corrected him, with her lilting accent) who, as far as anyone knew, had shown up late one night and provided an unnamed service for Clint’s father.  He had given her leave to stay at the Manor for as long as she wished, and as of yet she had shown no inclination to leave.

Clint was pleased with that, because he felt closer to Madame Leota than he had to his own parents.  She was a small woman with untamed curly brown hair that she let trail down her back, rather than pinning it up as was considered proper.  She always wore far too many shawls and large gold hoops in her ears that swung wildly when she moved her head and often got tangled in her wild curls.  Despite her chaotic appearance, she had a very calm and nurturing nature.

She had always allowed him to play in her séance room, where she consulted the spirits and participated in sorts of other behavior that might have been called witch-like to those who had no knowledge of her.  Clint had always liked her room, draped in rich velvets and silks, with the thick scents of foreign spices and incense hanging in the air.  When he was a boy he’d spent many a day playing underneath the solid round table in the center of the room that held a large crystal ball, listening to her rhyming incantations.  Sometimes she would sing to him, her voice deep and steady.  Her songs were always in a foreign tongue that lilted and calmed the same as her accent.  He trusted her above all else.  She was the only person that he’d ever told about Phil.

“I have been crystal gazing,” she informed him as he came to stand beside her.  She was standing at the east end of the cupola, looking out over the tiny village of Hurley down below. “What I have seen is...troubling.”

“How troubling?” he asked, turning to look at her with a frown.  She didn’t remove her gaze from the village.

“I fear this marriage may be a mistake,” she said.

“This marriage was your suggestion,” Clint reminded her tersely.

“I am aware,” she told him, finally looking away from the window to cast him a look that had him backing down immediately. “I thought it was best.  But as I gazed this morning, I saw death.”

“Whose death?” Clint asked, his heart in his throat.

“I know not,” she said, and her frown told him that that was what frustrated her the most. “I could only grasp the smallest of intents and the most basic outcome.  I have no timeline or solid details, only the promise of death and despair.”

“Are you saying that I should call off the wedding?” Clint asked her incredulously. “When I am to be married in...just over an hour’s time?”

“The wedding cannot be called off,” Leota disagreed. “It is far too late, everything has already been set into motion.  There is no path to walk but this one.”

“I don’t understand what you’re telling me,” Clint admitted. “Or, more accurately, why.  If everything is so firmly set in stone, and the future is so very vague, then why tell me?”

“Perhaps to apologize for my role in leading you to this place,” she said. “I sought to help you, as I always have, and this time I may have damned you.  For that I am sorry.”

“You’ve not damned me,” Clint assured her. “Perhaps you just don’t understand what it is you saw.  Sometimes that happens, does it not?”

“Sometimes,” she conceded, though she did not seem convinced. “It troubles me that it was all so unclear and hidden.  I worry for you, dear boy.”

“I will be fine,” Clint assured her. “You didn’t see whose death, or when.  It could all just be a misunderstanding due to lack of information.  Besides, I have you to watch out for me, don’t I?  And Phil as well.”

“Perhaps,” Leota said, looking conflicted. “I just want you to be happy and healthy.”

“From your mouth to God’s ears,” Clint told her with a teasing smile. “And I am happy.  As much as I can be.”

“Of that, I am glad,” she assured him.  She turned towards him then, taking his face in her hands and looking him seriously in the eyes.

“I will do everything in my power to make sure that you are happy with your man,” she told him. “You deserve that, at the very least.”

“Thank you, Leota,” he told her solemnly, and she rose up on her tiptoes to press a kiss to his forehead.

“You are a good man, Clint Barton.  I can only pray that I have not destroyed you.”

* * *

 

Sam had been standing at the bottom of the hill for nearly ten minutes.

He had been all psyched to go up, practically vibrating with adrenaline as he walked the few short blocks between his house and the hill.  He’d given himself a pretty spectacular peptalk, if he did say so, and he’d been already to go bust some ghost ass and save his stupid friends from certain death.

But when he got the the bottom of the hill, he’d heard music.  It wasn’t any sort of modern autotuned, bass thumping top 40, but more a reel, like someone was having a party straight out of the 1800s.  While that ordinarily wouldn’t have sent shivers up Sam’s spine, the fact that it was drifting down a hill from a mansion that had been abandoned in 1894 was certainly cause for goosebumps.

For a moment, he considered just going home, but it was only for a moment.  Sam was a lot of things, but he wasn’t a coward. If his friends really were in trouble like he suspected, he couldn’t just leave them up there.  Freaked out as he was by a lifetime of horror stories about the Barton Manor, he couldn’t let that make him leave his friends alone in a potentially dangerous situation.

He started up the hill.

The music got louder the higher he ascended, and before long he could also hear the sound of laughter and the hum of voices.  It was way more voices than there should have been, the loud buzz hinting at maybe a few hundred people.  He kept going, telling himself that it was his imagination, or that it was some kind of prank.  There couldn’t possibly be hundreds of people up on the hill.  Someone would have noticed that many people heading up there, and Hurley itself only had a population of 6,000.  No one from Hurley ever dared to go up there, and everyone would have noticed a sudden influx of strangers.

It had, mercifully, stopped raining for the moment, but the legs of his jeans were still soaked through from walking through the wet tall grass, and the feel of electricity and heaviness in the air suggested that it might start pouring again at any minute.  He came to the top of the hill, the music and voices now a cacophony, coming from behind the manor, rather than from inside it.  He knew, from having driven all over the place around that hill his whole life, that the only thing behind the mansion was a graveyard and the long stretch of the thruway. It didn’t bode well.

He steeled his nerves, prepared to be faced with some truly serious bullshit, and made his way around the edge of the house.  He wasn’t really sure what expected to find, but a graveyard full of hundreds of pearlescent figures in old-timey dress was certainly not it.

“Ho-ly shit,” he breathed, frozen in place at the edge of the mansion.  He’d always been freaked out by the mansion, of course, and he’d always heard that it was haunted, but he’d never quite managed to make himself really accept that ghosts were actually a thing.  Part of it was probably self preservation; if ghosts didn’t exist, they couldn’t hurt you.  But it was a lot harder to convince himself that ghosts weren’t real when he was staring at hundreds of them.

Nearby, he could see a pair of men in revolutionary war uniforms locked in what appeared to be an endless duel.  They paced away from each other and then turned and fired, both falling dead to the ground before flickering, disappearing, and reappearing again in the middle, back to back to begin their pacing again.  Just past them was a pair of young men playing chess, though they didn’t seem to notice the looped duel playing out right next to them.  A man and a woman were sitting comfortably on top of tombstones, chatting.  They were both dressed in “Ride of the Valkyries” armor.  The woman was large all around, with a winged helmet and pale blonde hair arranged in long braided pigtails, one of which was wrapped tightly around the neck of the man sitting next to her.  The man was incredibly skinny with a long blonde moustache, and he didn’t seem to mind chatting with the woman, even though Sam thought it was pretty clear that she had strangled him to death with her braid.  Every few words they would break out in opera song, wailing over the din of the graveyard.  They seemed to be trying to fit their operatic style in with the plunky, awkward playing of several ghosts who seemed to have formed a band, even though their instruments consisted of two flutes, a harp, a set of bagpipes, and a drum made up of a tombstone, with bones for drumsticks.

There were hundreds of other ghosts there as well, dressed in all sorts of extravagant ways, doing strange things or seemingly normal things.  There was even a ghost of a dog running around the graveyard, stopping to sniff at things and begging for pats from anyone who got too close.  It looped it’s way through the top of the yard and then settled it’s attention on Sam, who was still too frozen to do anything but let it come to him.

The dog sniffed at his feet and then pushed against him, begging for pats.  Or rather, it would have pressed against him, had it not been a ghost.  Instead, it pressed through him, sticking it’s head straight through his legs, leaving him with the sensation of having stepped into a pool of ice water.  It yipped at him, begging for pats, and Sam really wasn’t sure what to do.  It barked again, and it drew the attention of the Opera singers.

“We’ve got a live one!” she yelled, and suddenly all the ghosts within shouting distance were turning to stare at him, except for the duelers, who continued to endlessly loop.  Sam was once again struck with the urge to run screaming all the way back down the hill, but he stayed firmly put.  He had to find his friends, if he wasn’t horribly murdered by a lady dressed like a viking first.

“Look at that!” the drummer croaked, disappearing from behind his tombstone drum and appearing directly in front of Sam.  He shoved his arm straight through Sam’s chest, making him jump back in shock.  It didn’t hurt, but the cold sensation and the general idea of someone shoving their arm through his chest unsettled him. “He really is alive!”

“Well, obviously,” the woman drawled. “That’s what I just said, isn’t it?  Who are you, boy?”

“Um...Sam?” he offered, his voice cracking just slightly. “I’m looking for my friends.  Have you seen them?”

“You’ll have to be a little less vague than that, dear,” she told him. “Our happy house hosts over nine hundred ghosts, you see.”

Sam wasn’t sure that he’d ever describe the Barton Manor as “happy”, but then he supposed he wasn’t seeing it from the perspective of a ghost.  Maybe they liked the creepy, murderesque aesthetic.  They didn’t seem particularly intent on murdering him, though, so he he took a few, hesitant steps closer to the opera lady, so that they were close enough that she didn’t have to shout over the din.  She seemed kind enough, the brutal murder of her companion aside.

“Well, I’m looking for living people,” he told her.  He found that he was still too freaked out to look her in the face, because it was really disconcerting to see straight through her head, so he focused instead on the tombstone she was sitting on.  It was old and in disrepair, though the epitaph could still be read, _“First Lady of the Opera, Our Haunting Harriet”._

“There are three of them: a big blonde guy, a brunet guy with a prosthetic arm, and a short red-headed woman.  Have you seen them?”

“I can’t say I have,” she told him with a frown. “Though the curse is obviously active, so they are probably inside.”

Sam had been afraid of that.  It was one thing to poke around the grounds, but it was something else entirely to actually go into the manor.  He looked over his shoulder back at the mansion, which he had only ever seen from the bottom of the hill before.  It was a lot bigger than he had originally thought.  He paused then, turning back to look at Harriet.

“The curse is active?” he asked. That couldn’t mean anything good. “What curse?”

“The _curse_ ,” she repeated, as if saying the same thing with different inflection would answer his question. “The reason we’re all here, dear boy.  Your friends must have activated it.”

“Well they need to un-activate it,” he told her, his voice a little hysterical.

“It’s far too late for that, dear,” she told him, apparently sympathetic.

“It’s a curse,” Sam said desperately. “Extensive movie knowledge says that curses are made to be broken.”

“Perhaps,” she said. “But I meant that it’s far too late for you.”

She lunged at him then, her face fixed in an ugly sneer, and swung her heavy braid around his neck.  He was surprised to find that it felt horribly solid around his throat as it tightened.  It didn’t slide straight through him as the dog and the drummer had, but rather constricted and starting cutting off his air way.  He scrabbled at it with his hands desperately, but none of the other ghosts made a move to help him.  The other opera singer just shrugged at him, his own braid-noose still snug around his neck.

Just as his vision started to get spotty, though, the dog snarled and snapped its jaws closed around Harriet’s leg.  She let out a startled shriek, and suddenly her braid went incorporeal again, as if she had really had to focus to make it solid enough to strangle him.  Sam stumbled away from her, gasping for air, as she started kicking at the dog to get it off her.

“Come on!” a young female voice commanded, and he felt a tight grip around his wrist for a moment, dragging him towards the house. “Good boy, Boney!”  He heard the dog yip happily in response and then turn back to snarling at Harriet, who was wailing loudly.

They ran up to the back door, which burst open in front of them, slamming against the wall.  She yanked him inside and then the door slammed shut again behind them.  He stopped for a long moment to catch his breath and try to calm down the adrenaline worked up from almost being _murdered_ by a _ghost_.  He felt the hand slip through his wrist.  Not away, but through, plunging his arm into the ice-bucket sensation again.  He scrambled away from her, backing up into the wall.

She stood back from him, her hands raised placatingly in front of her, as if to show she meant no harm.  She was a young Asian girl, maybe twelve or thirteen at most.  She was wearing a white frock dress and black tights with shiny Mary Janes on her feet.  Her black hair was tied back with a large bow.  It was fashion straight out of the turn of the 20th century, made only more disturbing by the fact that the front of her otherwise immaculate dress was torn with knife marks surrounded by silvery stains that could only be blood.

“I won’t hurt you,” she promised him, her voice gentle.

“Oh you won’t, huh?” Sam gasped, disbelievingly. His voice was hoarse from nearly been strangled, and he was sure he’d have some pretty impressive bruises around his neck for at least a week. “Cause I was just talking to a sweet lady and then she was trying to _murder_ me, so…”

“I’ve been murdered,” she told him dryly. “I can’t say that I’m willing to do something so terrible to someone else.  Besides, I had Boney rescue you.  Would I do that if I wanted you dead?”

“I don’t know, man,” Sam groaned. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m kind of in over my head here.”

“I did notice,” she said. “What are you doing here?  It’s not safe.”

“I know that,” Sam told her, irritated. “You think I don’t know that?  My whole life I have a healthy fear of this place and stay far away like you’re supposed to do, and then I bring my dumbass friends home for Thanksgiving and they all decide it’ll be a great idea to go up the hill into the Murder House and now I’m up here looking for their stupid asses and they’re probably all dead and now _I’m_ gonna be dead and…”

He was aware that he was panicking, but he figured he was owed it.  He had nearly just died, after all, and his best friends were all missing and had apparently started up some curse, and if he lived through the night he was sure it would take years of therapy to get over.

“I’m sorry this has you so rattled,” the girl said, her tone soothing. “I’m sure you’ve had quite the fright.  But...your friends.  Are they the three who came up here earlier?  The two men and the woman?”

Sam nodded and took a few deep breaths, trying to calm himself down.  It worked a little bit, in that he was able to keep himself from hyperventilating, but he wasn’t so sure that it would hold out for long, if she gave him bad news.

“A blonde, a brunet, and a redhead?” he asked, and she nodded. “That’s them.  Are they okay?  Are they alive?”

“Well,” she said, frowning thoughtfully. “They’re alive.  I’m not sure that I can tell you that they are okay in good faith.”

“What does that mean?” Sam demanded. “I haven’t been able to reach them, and I’m really worried, so if you could cut the cryptic bullshit, I’d really appreciate it.”

“They activated the curse,” she said, like that explained anything at all.

“Oh my god, not again with the curse thing.  What does that mean? What curse?”

“The Manor’s curse,” she said, and Sam was just about ready to throttle her. “It was laid upon the whole manor and the grounds, until the lovers can be reunited after death.”

Sam stared at her for a long moment, giving his brain time to process. “So wait.  You mean that story about the last Master of the Manor getting murdered on his wedding night really is true?”

“Unfortunately,” she said. “The curse activates every time enough living people enter the Manor, and the last day of Master Barton’s life plays over again, ultimately ending in his death.  You see, when three living people enter the Manor, they are possessed by the spirits of the Master, his bride, and the Master’s manservant.  I don’t think that the spirits even realize that they’re dead.  They just play out the day, the same exact way that it happened in life.  The possessed hosts die, and the curse goes dormant again until three more people arrive.  It’s been quite a long time since anyone has dared to come inside.”

“So, if anyone living who comes into this house gets possessed, then why haven’t I?” Sam asked, looking around suspiciously for any sneaky ghosts trying to take him for a joy ride.

“The curse only requires three,” she explained, her voice excited. “And it only calls to people in threes.  I’ve been here since 1914, and this is the first time that I’ve ever seen a fourth person enter the Manor.  I think you’ve been sent here to break the curse.”

* * *

 

“Fitz?” Jemma poked her way around the boxes and covered furniture in the attic, searching for her friend.  She could hear the Hatbox Ghost cackling somewhere nearby, as he was wont to do, so she headed off in the opposite direction.  Fitz preferred to be alone when he was in a mood, so he would often stay on one side of the attic while the Hatbox Ghost stayed on the other side.

She found him curled up on the floor next to a dusty green traveling trunk.  He wasn’t actually doing anything, just studying the floor with a frown, as if there was something written there that only he could see.  She settled down next to him quietly, and he finally heaved a sigh and looked up at her.

“I really don’t feel like talking, Jemma,” he said. “I’m just going to stay up here until this whole awful night is over, if you don’t mind.”

“I do mind,” she scolded. “Fitz, something has happened.”

“Has the curse broken?” he asked. “Because if not…”

“I don’t know why you’re cross with me,” she huffed. “This isn’t my fault, you know.  I’m equally as dead and cursed as you are.”

He grimaced at her, looking regretful. He ran a hand over his face and hunched his shoulders. “You’re right.  I’m sorry.  What’s going on?”

“Well,” she said. “The wedding’s just finished and I imagine the reception will be starting soon.  But I was following along, watching Clint go through the motions, because you know I just can’t help myself, and then Skye came and found me to tell me; there’s another person in the Manor.”

Fitz’s eyebrows rose in questioning surprise, as if he wasn’t quite sure that he’d heard her correctly.

“What do you mean, there’s another person?”

“Just that!” Jemma told him excitedly. “He says that he is a friend of the other three, and that he came up here to look for them.”

“But they always come in threes,” Fitz said, confused. “Every time, they come in threes.  We left several of our friends behind to come as a triad, I don’t understand…”

“I don’t either,” Jemma admitted. “But he’s here, and he’s not possessed.  Skye thinks he’s here to break the curse.”

“But how?” Fitz demanded. “Madame Leota always talks about breaking the curse, but she never says how to do it.”

“I don’t know,” Jemma sighed. “But we have to try.  Are you coming?”

Fitz stared at her for a moment, the silence broken only by the quiet murmurs of the Hatbox Ghost.  He looked hesitant and scared, and Jemma understood completely.  The curse was terrible, and every time it was active, they were reminded of their own awful deaths, and the way that they had had absolutely no control over what they were doing.  Death was one thing, but the feeling of complete and utter powerlessness was something else entirely.  Finally, he huffed and got to his feet.

“All right,” he agreed. “It can’t hurt to try.”

Jemma rewarded him with a wide, thankful smile, and then they flitted together downstairs to go find Skye.  They found her and all the live ones in the large entrance hall where the wedding had taken place.  It was clearly the reception, though they all couldn’t see what the possessed people could see.  While the pair waltzing through the entrance hall no doubt saw plenty of other people dancing with them, all Jemma could see was the dusty, cobwebbed room, and two people dancing alone.

Phil, in the large blonde man’s body, was standing at the banister surrounding the upper hallway that peeked out into the entrance hall.  His face was fixed in a bitter scowl as he watched the couple dance, his hands gripping the banister so tightly that his knuckles were white.  Downstairs, the man was trying to get his possessed friends’ attention.

“Nat!  Bucky!” He was shouting at them, hoping that by raising his voice he would somehow break through to them, but they didn’t respond.  They just kept dancing, a fluid and graceful motion, not missing a step.

“You guys this is not fucking funny!” the man snapped, his voice cracking just slightly.

“To speak that way when ladies are present!” Fitz scolded quietly, but Jemma only shushed him.

“Natasha!  Come on!  Bucky!”

The couple gave a twirl that would have looked quite magnificent if the girl called Natasha had been wearing proper skirts rather than a pair of very tight pants and boots.  Fitz and Jemma exchanged a look, and then they flitted the rest of the way downstairs, appearing besides Skye.  

“They can’t hear you,” Jemma told him.  

The man jumped a mile high, clutching his chest as he turned to look at them.  He stared at them, his eyes flicking down quickly to stare at the noose around Jemma’s neck, the thinness of Fitz’s body from the way the consumption had worn at him deathly fast in a matter of minutes, and then he cussed again.

“Christ, how many of you are there?” he demanded.

“How many people have gone up the hill and never come back down again?” Skye retorted. “We’re all still here, Sam.  We’ve all been here this whole time.”

“Shit,” he said, with feeling. “And my friends?  They’re gonna be stuck here too?”

He looked at them, his eyes soft and dark with worry as they finished their dance, Clint going down for a bow and Yelena curtsying back to him, inclining her head just slightly.

“Yes,” Skye said solemnly. “If you don’t save them, they will be.”

“And I suppose I can’t just slap them until they wake up?” he grumbled darkly. “Or hire an exorcist or something?”

“We’ll ask Madame Leota,” Skye said firmly. “She’ll know.”

“What makes you so sure?” Fitz asked darkly. “If she actually knew how to break the curse, she would have done it by now!”

“Madame Leota can help us!” Skye insisted. “She was just never able to before.  But now Sam’s here!  He’s broken the pattern, and he can save us.”

Sam grimaced at Skye’s enthusiasm, looking about as confident as Fitz did about his own curse-breaking abilities.  Jemma sent him a commiserating smile.  She knew how Skye could get, when she believed in something and got hopeful about it.  She had a very firm definition of wrong and right, and a forceful personality to back it up.  She tended to bulldoze people until they did what she wanted, even if that wasn’t necessarily her intention.

“We’ll see,” Fitz said darkly, and Sam nodded in agreement.  But despite his clear reluctance to commit to breaking the curse, he steeled his shoulders and looked Skye straight in the eyes.

“All right,” he said. “Take me to see Madame Leota.”

* * *

 

Even though he had promised himself that he’d give his new bride the attention she deserved on her wedding day, Clint found himself scanning the room for Phil almost constantly.  He was technically a servant, so he hadn’t actually been invited to the wedding, but Clint did catch glimpses of him from time to time, speaking quietly to the maids in the corners or observing the festivities from up on the second floor.

He was very good at his job, and excellent at remaining unseen and unnoticed.  That was the mark of good house staff, after all.  If Clint hadn’t been purposely looking for him, he doubted that he would have noticed him at all.  Presenting an unremarkable front was Phil’s specialty, and it was a trait that had and would continue to keep them safe.  It also kept the wedding guests from noticing the way he loitered in a way that a servant should not, and Clint was grateful for it.  This wedding was difficult for both of them, but just being able to see Phil made him feel a bit more at ease with the entire situation.

“What has your attention, my darling?” Yelena asked, her voice revealing no hints of the Russian accent that her uncle boasted.

Clint tore his attention away from where Phil stood on the balcony, turning his focus back to his new bride.  She was pretty enough, he supposed, and she seemed quite nice, but he hardly knew her.  Their engagement had been arranged only a few weeks before, and their nuptials had been rushed at the insistence of her uncle.  Clint suspected that he was worried that Clint would change his mind if he was left too much time to overthink his decision.  He hadn’t even met her until the previous Tuesday, when she had arrived at Barton Manor with several trunks and her uncle, looking sweet and demure dressed in a pretty white frock no doubt meant to subtly infer chastity that she no longer had.  He had only spoken to her a few times, always with a chaperone, of course, and she had seemed a decent enough person, but it was quite difficult to tell from only a few meetings.

To be fair, he had brought this upon himself  by agreeing to marry a total stranger, but in the end it was simply a matter of intimacy.  He knew Phil, he loved Phil.  They had been together for a very long time, and friends even longer than that.  Yelena was, technically, his wife.  She seemed comfortable enough around him to use gentle endearments and hang off his arm, smiling and simpering at those who came to offer her their congratulations, but Clint was not quite there.  When it came down to focusing his attention on one or the other, he automatically was more interested in the welfare of the man he loved.  He knew this whole arrangement was unfair to Yelena, and that really he was using her for his own selfish gains, but he could not bring himself to care enough not to do it.  It was selfish, and possibly even cruel, but he hoped that she would understand and still be happy enough with their arrangement.

“Darling?” she prompted again, her pretty face marred by a frown.  He realized that he’d never answered her question, and had instead continued scanning the floor for Phil.

“Ah,” he said, tearing his eyes away from the masses of people twirling on the dance floor. “I’m sorry, I’m afraid I’m a bit distracted.”

Her frown deepened just slightly, and Clint almost rolled his eyes.  Perhaps she would require more attention than he had previously anticipated.

“Would you like to dance?” he asked, and her face cleared up immediately.  

He offered his hand and she placed hers daintily in his.  Her hand was tiny and her skin smooth.  It was such a huge contrast to the hands he was used to, large and hardened by years of labor, yet still kind where it counted.  It was distracting, and not what he wanted, but this was his life now.  He pushed the thought from his mind and swept her out on to the dance floor, spinning effortlessly into a waltz.

It was as they were taking a wide spin that he finally spotted Phil.  He was up on the balcony, watching them with a dark look on his face.  He tried to hide it when their eyes met, sparing Clint a smile, but it was tight and ingenuine.  Clint really couldn’t blame him, but he found himself feeling hurt at the expression all the same.  He knew that this was how it had to be, but he didn’t enjoy it.

“You seem melancholy,” Yelena said, her voice pitched low.  Her blue eyes, so different from Phil’s, somehow darker but not deeper, stared up into his unflinchingly, and he found himself almost shrinking away from her gaze, though he couldn’t explain why.

“I’m not…” Clint tried to protest, but she cut him off sharply.

“You are,” she said. “I am well aware that we hardly know each other.  I’m aware of my circumstance and the fact that you have taken pity on me.  What I am not aware of are your reasons behind your decision.”

“I don’t…”

“I don’t particularly care for your reasoning,” Yelena interrupted him.  Her voice was pitched low, but a soft and devoted smile remained on her lips.  She gazed up at his face adoringly as they swept around the dance floor, and anyone who was watching would only see newly wedded bliss.  They did not hear Yelena’s no-nonsense tone. “I do not know you.  I do not love you.  None of that matters.  What matters is that you are my husband and I am your wife.  What you do behind closed doors is your business, and what I do is mine.  But you will not disgrace me, Clinton Barton.  I will not go through that again.”

“I have no intentions of disgracing you,” Clint said, feeling a rush of relief at her words. Clearly they were on the same page.  She was probably still in love with her first husband, the one who had died mere weeks after they had wed. “I do have...previous engagements.  But I assure you that the rest of Society will see no more than what we want to them to see.”

“Good,” she said curtly. “Then I shall do my duty by you, and you shall do yours by me.  You will have a son, and I will have my charmed life.”

“Agreed,” Clint said, drawing back to offer her a bow as the song came to an end.  She curtsied to him, dipping down in a smooth motion and bowing her head low, the picture of perfect submissiveness.

He was impressed by her in spite of himself.  He would not have guessed, from the demure, simpering woman he’d known these past two weeks, that she was actually fierce and strong, willing to stare a man down and bargain for her own future.  She had utterly fooled him, waiting until after their nuptials to reveal her true colors.  He supposed that he should probably be cross with her and the way she had lied to him, but mostly he was just impressed with her gumption.

“I’m glad we have an understanding, darling,” she cooed at him, her voice soft and mild again.

The change in personality was so quick and complete that he found it somewhat disconcerting.  He had been concerned about hurting her with his indifference.  It was clear to him now that that would not be an issue.  Part of him was relieved by it, but part of him was also perturbed.  He had thought that he knew what he was getting himself into.  Now, he wasn’t so sure.

* * *

 

Sam tried not to question his life choices as he followed the three spectres deeper into the old, dark mansion.  Every once in a while they would pass another ghost.  Most of them acknowledged them, and sometimes even offered a friendly hello, but every once in a while they’d come across a ghost dressed in a maid’s outfit, scurrying from room to room and commencing to go through the motions of cleaning.  They didn’t seem to notice that anything was off, or that Sam and the ghosts were even there.  The three teenagers exchanged knowing glances every time they passed one, and finally Sam snapped.

“Okay,” he said, “What’s up with the freaky maids?”

“They are imprints,” Fitz said. “It’s part of the curse.  When it gets closer to the end of the day, what the possessed see starts to project on the mansion.  In another half hour or so, we’ll be able to see all of the imprints of the last night.”

“Well, then how come they’re all zombiefied?” Sam asked, clarifying when he saw their blank looks, “They don’t seem to notice us.”

“That’s because they’re not spirits,” Jemma informed him. “They’re not like us.  We are ghosts, made up of the essence of what is left of the people that we once were.  Souls, if you will.  But the imprints are just memory, superimposed over the mansion as a background.  They aren’t sentient.”

“Huh,” Sam said thoughtfully, watching as a maid scurried directly through the door of one of the closed-off rooms, all the while miming as if she had opened it. “So they’re just all on repeat, then?”

“Yes,” Skye answered. “Some of them will have a part to play.”

She didn’t expand further on her cryptic explanation, and he didn’t bother to press her.  Clearly she enjoyed being cryptic and making grand statements, and he wasn’t going to ruin her fun.  She was dead, after all.  She probably didn’t have a lot of entertainment value going for her.

They guided him down two more long, dark hallways before he started to hear a woman’s voice.  It was low and accented, chanting in an almost dreamy, detached sort of way.

 _“...spirits from the grave come forth,”_ the voice was saying. _“Lift us from the black and show us, show us the way back!”*_

“What is that?” Sam demanded in a furious whisper. “What is she calling here?”

“She’s not calling so much as...narrating,” Jemma explained with a wince. “Madame Leota has always been quite fond of dramatics.”

“That’s Madame Leota?” Sam demanded, uncertain.  She sounded kind of creepy, and he wasn’t sure that he wanted to be getting advice from her.

“It is,” Skye told him. “She’s mostly harmless, though.  You’ll see.”

“ _Mostly_ harmless,” Sam scoffed, but he didn’t turn back.  It was way too late for that, and he knew it.

_“Evil and Darkness have fallen this night, and now to survive you must gain new sight!”*_

They led him up to a doorway that was draped with dusty, moth-eaten velvet curtains.  They must have been of very fine quality a hundred or so years ago, but now they just lent very well to the creepy, dead decor.  The ghosts didn’t seem to mind them, walking straight through them as if they weren’t there at all.  Sam took a breath and followed them, not wanting to think too much and let himself get paralyzed by his own fears.

The room past the door was lit by an eerie green glow and draped wall-to-wall in more moth-eaten velvets and brocade silks.  The oriental rug on the floor was equally as threadbare and dusty, though Sam suspected it had been quite elegant in it’s prime.  For all it’s draperies, though, the room itself was rather lacking in furniture.  There was a large, old fashioned armoire stuck against one wall, next to another door, and a few large spider-web draped candelabras placed around the room. Besides those, though, there was only a throne-like Louis XV chair set behind a large, round table in the middle of the room, which was draped with more brocade silk. At the middle of the table sat a huge crystal ball, the source of the green glow.

Madame Leota’s voice was loud and strong all around them, still chanting in cryptic, creepy rhymes, but the woman herself was nowhere to be seen.  He took a hesitant step into the room, wondering if she was hiding in a corner or maybe just invisible.  As he did, all of the candles in the room sputtered to life at once, and the scent of incense and spices filled the air.  He gave himself credit for merely jumping in surprise, and not shrieking like a little girl.

He immediately had to rescind that credit due to the noise he made when he realized that there was a disembodied head floating inside the crystal ball.  She was a beautiful woman, maybe in her thirties with a general sort of look about her that seemed to infer Eastern European roots.  Her wild, dark curls framed her round face and high cheekbones and she stared him down with brown eyes lined heavily with dark kohl.  Beautiful or not, though, the fact remained that she was just a head.  He couldn’t really see much of her neck due to the heavy green glow, but what he _could_ see hinted at a jagged edge and a messy, unfortunate beheading.

“Madame Leota,” Skye spoke up, and the woman’s piercing eyes finally left Sam’s face and turned to focus on Skye instead. “This is Sam Wilson.  He’s not possessed.”

“Yes, I see,” Leota said, her voice echoing just slightly. “How is it that you’ve come to this place?”

“My friends,” Sam said, shifting uncomfortably under her unblinking stare. “They decided to come up here and check the place out, even though I told them everyone always dies.  When they didn’t come back, I had to make sure they were okay.”

“So you have come to save them,” Madame Leota said.

“Well, I came to bring them back,” Sam told her. “But as it turns out, I have to save them first.  It’s kind of typical.”

She cracked a tiny smile and bobbed forward, a motion that was obviously meant to be a nod.

“So you have come to break the curse and save your friends,” she repeated, her voice thoughtful. “How do you plan on doing so?”

“Uh, well…” Sam trailed off, looking around uncertainly at the ghosts. “They said you would tell me.”

“The question, then,” Leota said, “becomes this: how far are you willing to go to save your friends?  And what sacrifices are you willing to make?”

“I’d do anything to save them,” Sam said boldly. “Just tell me what to do.”

“You must allow the lovers to reunite,” Leota said simply, as if that was an actual helpful answer. “The lovers died on the Master’s wedding night, before they could complete their promise to remain together.  They died brutally, and separately, and they remain separate in death, lost to each other and the ether of time.”

“Okay, that sets the scene for a really great ghost story, I’m sure,” Sam said. “But that doesn’t _help_ me.”

“You are far too impatient,” Leota scolded him. “If you want my help, you will be quiet and you will _listen_.”

She fixed him with a dark glare, and he snapped his mouth shut and crossed his arms, sullenly waiting for her to continue.

“The curse laid upon this house threatens the lives of your friends, and your own life as well,” she told him. “There will be no escape for any of you unless the curse is lifted.  You must release them and allow them to reunite in death.  When the lovers are together once more and true love has won over greed, the curse will be broken and we will all be free.”

“Yeah, you already said that,” Sam said impatiently.  He was stressed and he was freaked out and there was a pretty big chance they were all gonna die tonight, so he wasn’t in the most patient of moods, despite the dark glares Madame Leota continued to send his way. “I’ve somehow gotta get the spirits of the Master and his wife back together.  I understand that.  You’re just not telling me _how_.”

“You understand nothing!” Leota told him angrily, while Skye and her friends all started muttering at each other. “You’ve not listened to a word I’ve said!”

“I have listened!” Sam retorted. “You’re just saying the same thing over and over.  ‘Reunite the lovers’! That’s incredibly useless information without the how-to!”

“Sam!” Skye interrupted him. “I think you’ve just got it wrong.”

She glanced between Sam and Madame Leota, as if checking to make sure that they were done yelling, and then continued. “What do you know about the death of the Master?”

Sam heaved a heavy sigh, but at Skye’s piercing look, he rolled his eyes and told her.

“Just what everyone who has ever been to Hurley knows,” he said. “Master Barton was the last of his family line, but he was well into his thirties before he actually got married.  But on the night of his wedding, when he went in to, uh, consummate his marriage, he found his manservant in the room instead.  The guy was apparently obsessed with him or whatever, and he decided that if he couldn’t have him, then no one could.  So he stabbed the master to death in his own bed and then went up to the cupola and hung himself.  The wife died a few years later from tuberculosis.”

Madame Leota made an angry hissing noise, her face dark with rage.

“It’s all lies!” she spat. “It’s lies and slander, and the pure love those boys shared for each other has gone down in history as a tarnished and broken farce!  I will show you, Sam Wilson, what really happened that night.  Come closer to me.”

“Um…” Sam said, not sure he really wanted to get closer to the angry decapitated head floating in a ball.  Skye didn’t really give him a choice, though.  She nudged him forward with a single, hard push to his back, and then muttered,

“Put your hand on the ball.”

“On the ball?” Sam asked. “You mean the one with her head inside it?”

“Yes,” Skye hissed at him, seemingly unperturbed. “Do it!”

Sam huffed in annoyance, but he put his palm against the top of the crystal ball.  The vision hit him like a sledgehammer.

* * *

 

“Phillip, I do not think you are being rational about this,” Leota warned, keeping her voice mild.  

She felt trouble and danger and death nudging at the back of her brain, as she had all day, and stubbornly she ignored it.  She had been wrong before.  She had interpreted what the sight and the spirits were trying to tell her incorrectly.  This was just another of those times.  It must be.

“Perhaps,” Phillip admitted, casting her a sorrowful glance.  “Maybe I am just a pathetic, sorry fool.  But I just have a bad feeling.  I must see him.”

“We may well be interrupting their consummation…”

“I never said that you must come with me,” Phillip said testily, and Leota roller her eyes at his temper. He was usually quite mild-mannered and endlessly respectful, but she could dismiss his tone due to the difficulty she was sure he was having.

“I only think of you, dear boy,” she told him gently. “You may see things that you will come to wish you had not.  Things that are not so easily unseen.”

“I am aware that I now share him with another,” Phil said stiffly.

“Being aware and seeing the reality are not quite the same thing,” Leota warned him, but Phillip did not heed her.

They came to a stop outside the Master’s door, and Phillip hesitated for only a second before raising his fist to knock.  It thunked heavily against the thick door, ringing down the long mostly silent hallway.  They were far enough from the party that it was mostly quiet, but they were still both straining their ears to listen for any sort of summons.  When no answer came, Phillip knocked again, a little louder.  When, again, no answer came, he steeled his shoulders and pushed the door open.

“Master Barton?” he called, his voice light and respectful. “I’m terribly sorry to disturb-”

His words broke off into an agonized cry,and then he was rushing into the room, all caution thrown to the wind.

“Clint!” he cried, and Leota followed after him, confused and dreading what she might see.  She was right to be.  

Clint lay spread out on his bed in a pool of his own blood with an ivory-hilted knife sticking up out of his chest.  There was so much blood that Leota couldn’t actually see the wounds on his chest, but she knew there had to be more than one.  Someone had stabbed him viciously in the chest several times, as he’d lain there with his shirt open, vulnerable and exposed.

Phil yanked the knife out of place and started to press down on the wound, not minding that he was staining his own fine clothing red.  He was only begging for Clint to answer him, to say something, anything, but it was very clear by the way he stared blankly up at the ceiling that he was already quite dead.  A sob wrenched from Phil’s throat and he pressed a few kisses to his lover’s face, imploring quietly that he wake up.

“I suppose I should have known it was you.”

They both looked up in surprise to find Yelena standing at the washbin on the other side of the room.  She was methodically cleaning blood from her hands, though the front of her white silk wedding dress was still drenched red.

“He kept staring at you all evening, but I thought it must be someone else.  The cook, or one of the maids.  It was silly of me to dismiss you so easily since you were a man.”

“What did you do?” Phil whispered harshly, still clinging to Clint’s body, like maybe if he held on tight enough the man might just wake.

“I killed him,” she said simply, as if it were obvious.  Leota supposed, looking upon the scene, that it was. “You look so upset about it, dear.  Did you love him?”

“You...you killed him?” he Phillip asked, as though those words in that order made no sense to him.

“I did,” she said, her voice sweet and slow, like she was talking to a small child. “I laid your lover out on that bed and promised him a son, and then I rode him until he was panting for me, and then I stabbed him six times in the chest.  He bled very prettily.”

“Why?” he demanded, and Leota began backing towards the door.  She hated to leave him alone with a body and a psychopath, but she had to get help.  She had to alert someone of what had happened.

“Because I wanted his home and his money,” she said simply. “He was by far richer than my other four husbands.  The three Russians, well.  They were easy and stupid, but they didn’t quite have that luxurious American wealth.  And Peter, well.  He fucked me so well I let him live a little longer, but eventually I got bored and had to go out of my way to orchestrate that little incident with the horse.  But it was very clear to me that your dear Clinton was very much in love with someone else and would have poor impulse control.  I had to be rid of him quickly.”

“It was just so very convenient that there was a ready-made scapegoat in place.  A jealous lover who had been spurned for marriage.  Hell hath no fury, so they say.  Somehow it’s more delicious to find out that he was fucking another man.  He pretended to like my parts quite well.  Though perhaps he wasn’t pretending.”

“I…” Phil said, his hands tightening into fists.

“Oh,” she said, her eyes wide, making her look all the foolish and pretty little girl, rather than a cold-blooded killer. “Does that upset you?  That I fucked the man you loved?  That the last thing he did before he died was come inside me?  He was very good, you know. Perhaps I’ll fall pregnant.  Maybe the last part of the man you loved is beginning to exist inside me right now.  Too bad I’ll have to kill it.”

Leota had heard quite enough.  She turned and hurried quickly down the hall.  She had to find help.  It was far too late for her dear Clinton, the man that she had watched grow from a little boy, but she could get justice for him.  She could stop that vile bitch from inheriting his estate and taking everything he had worked so hard to preserve.

She had to.

She made her way to the reception quickly and grabbed the arm of the first man she saw.  He looked down his nose at her, quite disdainfully, but she was used to that sort of treatment.  It no longer bothered her.

“Please sir,” she said. “Something awful has happened, please, you must come with me…”

He jerked his arm out of her grasp and was no doubt about to come up with some scathing insult, when a high-pitched, terrified scream rang through the Manor.  He looked at her, wide-eyed, and then quickly followed her off in the direction of the Master’s room.  Several other men joined them, though whether to help or rubberneck, Leota was unsure.

The scene they came upon was a rather shocking one, and Leota immediately realized that she had fallen straight into Yelena’s trap.  Phil was shaking her harshly, his eyes crazed with despair and loss.  Or at least, that was what Leota saw.  What the men with her saw, however, was that a man was dead, and his wailing wife was being savagely attacked by another man covered in blood.  Even as Leota tried to protest, to explain that they were being tricked, the men grabbed Phillip and hauled him back.  One of them punched him soundly in the face and they forced him to his knees, all while Yelena wailed and accused him of murder.

She looked frail and weak and traumatized, and Leota wanted to throttle her.  She had murdered her boy, after all, and she knew that Phillip was lost to her as well.  But she also knew that her position was very precarious.  She had heard Yelena admit to the murder, and she had no doubts that she would be the next target.

“I want him hanged!” Yelena was howling. “He murdered my husband!”

“Well, we can’t rightfully just take him out back and…” One man started to protest awkwardly.

“Then do it inside, I don’t care!” she shrieked. “Find the highest point you can and kill him!  My darling Clint, we had only just…” she trailed off, her face going red with a blush. “A child could be the only thing I have left of him.”

The men exchanged dark looks, and then they forced Phil to his feet.  Phil didn’t fight them, slumped in their arms and drenched in the blood of the man that he loved.  His eyes looked dead as they passed over Leota, like he didn’t even see her, and settled on Clint’s prone form on the bed.  She wanted to reach out to him, to promise him that it would all be okay, but she didn’t.  It wouldn’t.  Instead, she waited until the men had dragged Phil away and turned on Yelena.

“I will see you suffer for this,” she promised, and Yelena’s face went cold like ice.

“Will you?” she asked. “Because it seems to me that I’ve already won.”

* * *

 

Sam could still feel Madame Leota’s boiling rage flowing through his veins when she released him from her memories, and he stumbled back a few steps, reaching out for something to lean against.  The chair slid across the floor, seemingly of it’s own accord, until it was close enough for him to sink down into.

“Holy shit,” he breathed. “That’s what’s going to happen to my friends?”  He looked at the blood stains marring the front of Skye’s dress, and the noose hugging Jemma’s throat. “That’s what happened to you.”

“Yes,” Madame Leota said solemnly. “And until the curse ends, it will keep happening.  Until the lovers, my boys, are reunited, the cycle will continue.”

“Fuck,” Sam sighed. “Well...how am I supposed to stop it?  How can I reunite them?  They’re in there, but they’re acting like the maids.  Like imprints.  They’re together every time the curse activates, so why isn’t that enough?”

“Because the curse keeps them apart,” Skye explained. “I think it was an unintended consequence, because clearly whoever cast it meant to reunite them.  But inadvertently, they separated them even more.  And now the curse has to be broken before their spirits can break free of the cycle, and they can become self-aware enough to reunite.

“Okay,” Sam said thoughtfully. “So then how do we stop it? How do we break it?”

“You must stop the cycle,” Leota said. “You must save Clinton and kill Yelena before she kills him.”

“Kill Yelena?” Sam asked. “How do I kill a ghost?”

“If you kill her host, then it will stop the scene from acting out again,” Madame Leota explained.  “You will, effectively “save” Clinton from his murder, thus breaking the cycle.”

Sam nodded slowly, thinking, and then froze completely, his blood going ice cold.

“Kill her host?  You want me to kill Natasha?”

“It is the only way,” Madame Leota said, though she did look a bit sorry about it.

“Bull shit,” Sam said, and suddenly he no longer felt weak in the knees from the vision, too fueled by rage. “I’m not killing one of my best friends!  There has to be another way.”

“If there was any other way, don’t you think we would have done it by now?” Madame Leota demanded. “Either you kill one friend and save the other two, and yourself, or you let her live and you all die.  What is your choice?”

“Option three,” Sam snapped. “I save all of them, we go the fuck home, and maybe I don’t use you as a damn bowling ball, if you’re lucky.”

“It is the greatest good to the greatest number of people which is the measure of right and wrong” Madame Leota quoted at him, her eyes narrowed.

“Yeah, the needs of the many, thanks Spock,” he growled. “I don’t give a shit about the many.  I won’t murder Natasha.  And anyway, if that was the way to end things, why didn’t you do it? Why haven’t any of you ever just killed her host before?”

“Because we can’t touch them,” Fitz explained, looking vastly uncomfortable at the whole conversation. “If we get too close it is...quite painful.”

“Yeah, well, I won’t sacrifice Nat for anyone.  I know Steve and Bucky wouldn’t thank me for it, and I’d never forgive myself.  So either we find another way, or we all get really comfy together because we’ll be stuck here together for another hundred years.”

Madame Leota rolled her eyes, hard, and huffed. “You are being stubborn and unreasonable.  The curse must be broken, and you are wasting time.  But if you want to throw away your life and the lives or your friends, then you are welcome to try.”

“I will try,” Sam told her. “But you’re coming with me.”

“What?  I most certainly…”

Sam grabbed the crystal ball off the table, grunting in surprise at how heavy it was.  If they were going to find a way, he suspected that they’d need her help, unwilling as she may be to provide it or not.

“Put me down!” Madame Leota demanded, her head swiveling every which way as he carried her from the room. “This is incredibly undignified, how dare you…!”

“Oh, shut up,” Sam snapped irritably. “We’ve got a curse to break.”

* * *

 

“I hope you’re not too angry with me.”

Phil jumped in surprise and turned towards Clint, who was standing behind him.  He had lost him in the crowd, and while he was trying to pick him out again, the man had snuck up behind him on the balcony.  He always had known more about the manor than anyone else, and he used the various secret passages to his advantage.  As a child, he had enjoyed hiding in them and popping out at appropriate moments to scare the daylights out of the maids.  He hadn’t quite grown out of that habit as an adult, though he indulged much less often.

“Shouldn’t you be with your wife?” Phil asked, and then held back a wince.  Making sharp jabs at Miss Belo- _Mrs. Barton_ he reminded himself sternly-was certainly not the way to convince Clint that he wasn’t upset.

“Her uncle has commandeered her for a few dances,” Clint told him. “I thought I should come see how you are.”

“I’m fine,” Phil brushed him off. “However, this is your wedding reception.  People will miss you.”

“No one will miss me,” Clint dismissed that idea with a wave of his hand. “The champagne has been flowing for far too long and the party is in full swing.  No one is concerned with the guests of honor anymore.”

“Perhaps not right this second…”

“Phil,” Clint interrupted him. He took a hold of Phil’s elbow and steered him away from the balcony, back towards the hallway and the private wing of the house, to give them at least the illusion of privacy. “I know that you’re upset with me.  Please tell me what I can do to help.”

“I’m not upset with you,” Phil told him, a little more harshly than he meant to. “I understand…”

“Just because you understand doesn’t mean that you accept it.”

Phil opened his mouth to argue, and paused.  For just a moment, he’d swore he’d felt a wave of dizziness, and that Clint had become another man entirely, taller, with dark hair.  Just as quickly as the sensation had come over him, though, it was gone again, and he forgot entirely that the thought had even occurred to him.

“How can I accept it?” he hissed. “How am I supposed to accept that the man I love has a wife.  That this woman just gets to sweep in here, my home of nearly thirty years, and fill all of the roles that I can only dream of filling?”

“I don’t know,” Clint said brokenly, his face falling. “I don’t know, Phil.  I’m sorry.  You know if I could…”

“I know,” Phil told him. “But I’m not sure empty promises are enough for me, now that I see the reality of your decision.  I thought I could handle it.  I thought that knowing how you really feel would allow me to look past her presence in your life.  But now I am not so sure.”

“Please, tell me what I can do to convince you,” Clint implored, grabbing up Phil’s hands in his own. “I’ll do anything.”

Phil scoffed and looked away from him, his heart breaking in his chest. “We both know that’s not true.”

* * *

 

The party was in full-swing by the time they got back to it.  Sam realized that he had no idea how long he’d been stuck in the vision Madame Leota had given him, but clearly it had been long enough for the imprints to settle in.

Sam stopped to stare, his mouth hanging open, at the hundreds of ghosts packed into the room.  They were all dressed up in 19th century finery, and Sam might have thought they were real people if not for the way he could see straight through them.  It was as if they were slightly washed out, their hues just a bit paler than they ought to have been.  The hall was an almost deafening din of chatter and music, people gathered in groups to talk or dancing, perfectly poised, across the marble floor.

It was a strange sort of contrast, because while the imprints looked just as a fine and fresh-albeit ghostly-as they had the day the party had really happened, the Manor itself remained as it ever was, dirty and haunted with time and disrepair.  Sam sincerely doubted any of the people that those imprints represented would have deigned to set foot in such a lackluster place as the Barton Manor was in its current state.

“Do you see them?” he asked the three ghosts, and they shook their heads solemnly, continuing to scan the crowd.  It should have been easy, considering the three they were looking for were all solid, as compared to the transparent imprints, but somehow they blended quite easily into the crowd.

Finally, Fitz let out a small noise and pointed. “Look, there’s Yelena!”

Surely enough, Sam spotted Natasha’s bright red hair in the direction that Fitz was pointing.  She was dancing gracefully with the imprint of a creepy-looking man.  He was older, probably in his sixties, which Sam was pretty sure was ancient back in the day.  He had dark hair, a sharp, beak-like nose, and a twisted smile.  Natasha-Yelena-didn’t seem bothered by any of this, smiling up at him with a sweet expression that Sam had never seen on Nat’s face in his life.

“And there are Clint and Phil,” Skye spoke up, gesturing off down the hall.  Bucky and Steve were standing close together at the corner of the balcony, almost in the hall that led towards the rest of the Manor, on the opposite side from where Madame Leota’s seance room was located.

“So you’ve found them,” Madame Leota said, still sounding miffed at being carried around against her will. “Now what will you do? Have you come up with a life-saving plan already?”

“I’m working on it,” Sam snapped, looking between his friends. Steve and Bucky looked like they were having some sort of argument.  They were speaking lowly, so Sam couldn’t hear them over the din and from across the room, but it was clear by the expressions of their faces and the way Steve’s shoulders hunched defensively that they were arguing about something.

He felt a sudden pang of sadness watching them, knowing that it wasn’t his friends who were arguing, but the ghosts of the men who were unwillingly possessing them.  Men who, apparently, were in a forbidden love situation, and who were both going to die later that night.  He hoped that they made up before it happened.  They couldn’t have known at the time that this argument might be the last thing they ever did together, but Sam really hoped that wasn’t the case.  He couldn’t imagine getting in a fight with someone he loved, only to be brutally murdered and cursed for a hundred years before even getting to apologize.  It was just too unreal, and far too cruel.

“I might have an idea,” Jemma spoke up quietly.  She was fiddling with the frayed end of the noose that hung around her neck, an unconscious sort of tick that she’d probably been doing for decades.  It still made Sam kind of nauseous to see.  He forced himself to look away from the awkward jut of broken bone in her neck and up at her face instead.

“I’ve only just thought of it,” she admitted, “and it may not work.  But what if we tried to take possession of your friends?  Perhaps we could force the others out?”

Skye looked thoughtful at this suggestion, but Fitz’s face went dark, like it was the very last thing he wanted to do.  Sam figured he must have some guilty hang-ups from being possessed, since really it was by his hand that Skye had died, and Jemma’s death that he had demanded, even if it really had been Yelena pulling all the strings.  That sort of guilt wasn’t easy to reconcile with logic.

“I thought that you couldn’t get near them?” Sam asked, focusing on Jemma instead of Fitz.  If she was willing to try, he wouldn’t stop her.  If it worked, he could worry about convincing Fitz later.

“We _can_ get near them,” Jemma explained, biting her lip. “Only it’s quite painful.  I’m not sure that I will be able to break through, but I’ll do everything I can.”

Before anyone could say anything else, her form faded apart and became a pale yellow ball of light that zipped quickly down the hall.  The others didn’t seem to find the form change strange at all, so Sam just decided not to question it.  There was enough weird shit going on.  If he stopped to demand answers for every little thing, they would run out of time.  Instead, he followed after the little ball of Jemma, watching as she paused just before she got close to them, and then determinedly pressed forward towards Steve.  

For a moment she was completely still, as if she had hit a wall, but then she surged forward again, pressing forward slowly.  Suddenly, the room started to shake, just slightly.  It was like a small tremor, starting with the gentle tinkle of the crystal chandelier and getting more and more powerful the closer Jemma got to Steve.  He could hear a high-pitched noise, something like a shriek of pain, and it took him a long moment to realize that it was coming from the Jemma-ball.  She was literally screaming with pain, making the room shake with her efforts.

Just as he was about to call it off, she made contact.  The ball of light slammed into Steve’s side, and for a split second he blinked and looked utterly confused.  Sam held his breath, thinking it had worked, and then the Jemma-ball rebounded back, like she’d been thrown, zipping past them and straight through the wall.  Steve returned his attention to Bucky, apparently not having noticed that anything was amiss.

The room stopped shaking and Bucky and Steve moved closer together, Bucky grabbing Steve’s hand and begging him to understand.  Sam had a hard time tearing his attention away from them, but he did turn to make sure that Jemma was alright.  She re-emerged, fully-formed, from the wall, looking no worse for wear, though Sam wasn’t sure if that was just because she was a ghost and always looked the same.

“You okay?” he asked her, and she nodded, grimacing.

“I’m alright,” she told him, her eyes a little misty. “I’m sorry I couldn’t do it.”

“Hey, don’t even worry about it,” Sam told her quickly.  Even though she had died about eighty years before he was even born, she was still a twelve year old girl, and he hated to see kids cry. “We’ll think of something else.”

“There is nothing else,” Madame Leota said, but Sam ignored her.  If she wasn’t going to be helpful, he wasn’t going to acknowledge her.

“What shall we do now?” Skye asked, looking at Sam expectantly, like she thought he must have all the answers.  

He shifted uncomfortably, because he’d never felt less capable of handling a situation in his whole life. He had the most basic grasp on the situation and was really only still there because he was desperate to save his friends.  His stupid, adventurous friends who drove him crazy and caused him a ton of trouble, but who he loved enough to move the world for.  The only definitive answer he had was Madame Leota’s suggestion, and killing Natasha was simply not an option that he was willing to consider.

“I’m not sure,” Sam admitted, watching Steve and Bucky and wishing that he could just go over there and shake them until they snapped out of it.  Part of him was even tempted to try it, but then he remembered the way that Jemma had been blasted back and changed his mind.  She was already dead; flying back several yards and through a wall was a minor inconvenience for her.  For Sam, it could be deadly.

“Well, you better think quickly,” Leota said, sounding almost bored. “Time is running out.”

“Thank you for being the world’s most useless and creepy lawn ornament,” Sam snapped, irritated. “When you have something productive to add to the conversation, just let me know.”

“I have told you what needs to be done.  It is not my fault that you…”

“How do you even know?” Sam interrupted her, annoyed.

She paused partway through her rant and stared at him, like she was trying to see straight through him.

“What?”

“How do you know?  Who told you that the only way to end this is for Yelena’s host to die?  Do you even know who cast the curse?  Are they still around here somewhere, because maybe they’ll give me a straight answer that doesn’t involve _murder._ ”

“I converse with the dead,” Madame Leota told him stiffly.

“Apparently I do too,” Sam scoffed.

“Those who no longer reside on this plane,” she informed him. “I know many things that others do not.”

“I bet I know plenty of stuff that you don’t know.  I’m not gonna let some lady who doesn’t even know what an airplane is talk down to me,” Sam told her. “So forgive me if I’d like a more concrete answer than ‘the spirits told me’.  In my experience, the spirits don’t know jack shit.”

“There’s no need to be rude,” Fitz huffed, scowling at him, and Sam just sighed.  

“I’m sorry, all right? I’m just frustrated and we’re running out of time.”

He turned his attention to Steve and Bucky again, listening to what they were saying.

“She knows,” Bucky was saying. “About us.  Well, not you in particular, but she knows that my heart belongs to another.  She told me that as long as I was discrete and took care of her, she didn’t care what I did.  We will be just as free to be together as we have always been, Phil.”

“But we never really have been free to be together, have we?” Steve asked. “It’s always been secrets and lies and hiding.”

“It was always good enough before,” Bucky remind him gently. “Is it no longer good enough now, just because I have a wife?  I love you, Phil, and Yelena will ensure that people don’t ask too many questions.”

It was obvious when Steve broke.  His face crumbled and his shoulders dipped and then he was moving forward to embrace Bucky tightly.

“It is enough,” he promised. “I love you.  I know I’m being difficult, but I do love you and you will always be enough.”

Then they kissed each other, gripping each other close and holding on tight.  It was a sight Sam had seen before, but it felt different knowing that it wasn’t Steve and Bucky in there.  It felt like watching strangers.  He turned back to the three ghosts, getting back down to business.

“If I could, I’d get a young priest and an old priest up here, but we really don’t have time…” He trailed off when he saw their confused expressions and sighed. “Right yeah, you aren’t going to get _The Exorcist_ references, sorry…”

Skye perked up then, her face brightening from the gray cloud that had settled over it.

“Exorcism!” she said happily. “Why can’t we try that?”

Sam raised his eyebrows at her.

“Well, for one, I’m not a priest.  I don’t know if you know any exorcisms off the top of your head, but I certainly don’t.”

Skye’s smile faltered for only a second before she was perking back up again, because apparently she was filled with endless optimism.

“Surely there must be a bible in the library!  We could look it up!”

“Or…” Sam said suddenly, feeling stupid for not having thought of it earlier. “We could google it.”

They were all, of course, perplexed at the notion of ‘googling’, but Sam didn’t take the time to explain.  He dug his phone out of his pocket and typed “How to exorcise a ghost” into the search bar.  The reception up there was kind of terrible, as it often was in old buildings, and his phone was loading very slowly.  He stared at the little red bar that informed him he had one percent battery life left and willed it to hold on long enough for him to get an answer.

He crowed with victory when a wikiHow page loaded and then started reading it quickly to himself.

“It just says that it’s almost impossible to permanently force a spirit out of a body unless you’re a god,” Sam said, feeling stupid even as he read it. “But that if we’re going to try, we should have a priest or a medium help us ‘inform the spirit that it is not welcome’ without being afraid.”

His phone died then, the screen going black and then stubbornly showing the depleted energy symbol when he tried to turn it back on again.

“It doesn’t sound like much,” he admitted. “But it’s all we’ve got.”

“You’ve got nothing,” Leota scoffed at him. “It won’t work.”

“I have to try,” Sam said stubbornly. He turned back towards the pair and marched up to them, Madame Leota’s crystal ball clutched tightly in his arms.

“This isn’t going to work,” she sighed, and he gave her a slight shake.

“Less negativity, more helping,” he told her sternly. “I don’t have a priest, I just have the ghostly head of a medium.  So do your thing.”

“What I am trying to tell you right now is that I have already tried this,” Leota told him sharply. “The first time that the curse came activated, I realized what must have happened, and I tried to exorcise them so that they could move on to their next life together, and _it did not work_.  The _only way_ to stop it is to break the cycle.  The curse was meant to make Yelena suffer.  It was meant to make her die.  My boys were never meant to get caught up in it...”

Sam stopped and lifted up the crystal ball so that he was looking at Leota face-to-face.  She stared at him unflinchingly, but he could still see the guilt churning in her eyes.

“Who cast the curse, Leota?” he asked, even though he already knew the answer.

She closed her eyes and breathed out deeply, and then opened them again to look straight at him.

“I did,” she said.

“What?” Skye demanded, her voice sharp and betrayed. “You cast the curse?”

“I did,” Madame Leota repeated. “I...was foolish.  I knew about curses, and had been taught about them by my mother.  She told me that they were dangerous and only to be used in the most dire of situations.  It was the first curse I ever cast, and I was so untrained that I did it incorrectly.  Let me show you.”

And with that sudden warning, Sam was once again slammed into the middle of Madame Leota’s memories.

* * *

 

“I will see you suffer for this,” Leota promised, seething with rage at all she had lost.

“Will you?” Yelena asked. “Because it seems to me that I’ve already won.”

Her eyes flicked amusedly to look just over Leota’s shoulder, and before she could react, a pair of hands were grabbing her tightly and forcing her to the floor.  She twisted and turned to try and break free, but she found that the hold was strong and unbreakable.

“Oh uncle,” Yelena simpered. “You’ve saved me.”

She leaned over Leota’s thrashing body to kiss her ‘uncle’ deeply, stroking her hand over his cheek.

“You play your part so well,” she told him with a flirty pout. “I’ll have to properly thank you later.  I’ll let you fuck me covered in the psychic’s blood.”

The man, who was probably not her uncle after all, gave her a wicked grin and tightened his grip on Leota, making the bones in her wrists grind painfully.  Leota focused on that pain and the anger and dredged up that spark inside her, the one her mother had taught her to use for harm only if it were absolutely necessary.  It seemed to Leota that punishing this evil woman was more necessary than anything.  She grabbed that spark inside of her, and she focused it on the worst suffering she could think of.

“You will relive the pain of those boys,” she told Yelena, her voice dark with the curse she was weaving. “You will relive that pain until it eats you apart inside.  Until the very blood you spilled rises up inside you and you choke on it.  You will taste that death in the back of your throat for the rest of your days.  Until those two boys are together and at peace again, you will be only a spectre of what you once were, and their pain will haunt you and this entire manor until you are wiped from the face of this earth.  It is the love that you do not understand or care for that will destroy you.”

She spat at Yelena’s feet then, sealing her fate, but Yelena only laughed.

“Am I meant to be afraid of your little gypsy curse?” she asked mockingly. “Am I supposed to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder for the ghost of my dead husband?  Well, I refuse.  I will bathe in his money and luxuriate in the riches I rightfully earned, and I will rule this Manor and I will spit on his grave.  Your words do not scare me.  Uncle.  Give me her head.”

“Her head, mistress?” he asked, sounding excited at the idea of it.

“Well, yes, of course.  I heard that is how you kill witches.  Or, at least, that is what I’ll tell the men when they come back to assure me that the butler is well and truly dead and I tell them how you put a spell of passion on him and forced him to kill the Master out of unrequited lust.”

“You will get yours,” Leota said, refusing to show any fear.

“I sincerely doubt it,” Yelena said with a smile, and then her uncle dragged his knife across Leota’s throat.

* * *

 

Sam jerked away from the crystal ball, reaching up desperately to grab at his own throat, as if he expected to find a jagged line there.  His skin was smooth and uncut, though, and he breathed a sigh of relief.  He probably could have lived forever without intimate knowledge of what it feels like to have your throat cut, but he was mostly just glad that it was phantom pain.

“My curse was poorly worded,” Leota said, not seeming to care about his discomfort. “I doomed my boys to a century apart, and I trapped myself and hundreds of others on these grounds.  I was a fool, and now I need you to fix my mistake, Sam Wilson.  I need you to kill Yelena, because that is the _only way_ to stop this curse.”

“But can’t you stop it?” Sam demanded. “It’s your curse!”

“I don’t know how!” Leota admitted angrily. “And if I did, it has grown far beyond me.  The only way to stop it now is to bring Clinton and Phillip together, and the only way to do that is to keep Yelena from killing them.”

“Um, excuse me,” Jemma spoke up. “Sorry to interrupt, it’s only just…Clint and Yelena just left the hall together.”

“What?” Sam demanded, looking around wildly to see that Bucky and Steve had split up at some point, and now Natasha and Bucky were nowhere to be found.

“It’s time,” Leota said urgently. “You must do it now, Sam.  You must stop them.”

It occurred to him suddenly, and the answer was so simple that he wasn’t sure why he hadn’t thought of it before.  Maybe due to fear and self-preservation; a foolish hope that the rules might bend for him if he just wished it hard enough.

“Where?” Sam barked. “Which way?”

“I will show you!” Leota said, and suddenly her crystal ball was lifting out of his hands and she was floating in front of him.  He spared a moment to be bitter about lugging around that heavy ball when she could have made it float at any time, and then brushed the complaint aside.  It wasn’t the time.

He ran after Leota, down the long hallway and then another, smaller one to the big double doors at the end.  He crashed through the doors, not caring for any sort of propriety, and saw that Natasha had Bucky laying flat on the bed.  She was straddling him, holding his arms down by the wrists as she kissed him and grinding in a provocative way, though they didn’t seem to actually be having sex, due to the firm presence of pants.  He was glad for that, mostly because it would be really awkward to have to tear them apart if they _had_ been having sex.

“Do you have a plan?” Leota demanded as he rushed over to open the large window that looked out over the back terrace and the graveyard.  Neither Natasha nor Bucky seemed to notice their presence at all.

“I’m gonna get her to possess me,” Sam said, though the mechanics of how he would manage that was more of a hunch than anything. “And before she takes over, I’m gonna throw myself out that window.”

“What?” Leota asked, surprise evident on her face.

“I won’t kill Natasha,” Sam told her. “But I’ll die to save them, if I have to.”

He didn’t know if Leota was going to protest, but he didn’t give her the chance.  Instead he marched towards the bed with purpose, barking an unheard “HEY!” at his friends just as Natasha pulled a knife from within the sheets and raised it high over Bucky’s chest.  She didn’t hear him, but that was just fine, because he reached out and grabbed her wrists hard and stopped her from swinging the blade downward.

Suddenly, he seemed to exist to her, because she snarled angrily and fought him for control of the knife.  This, however, caught Bucky’s attention and his eyes snapped open and went wide.  Sam wasn’t sure if he could even see him, or if it just looked like Yelena was having a stroke while wielding a knife.  He seemed to realize the implications, though, and he bucked up suddenly, knocking Natasha from her perch.  Sam managed to grab the knife from her hands, just as there came a knock at the door.  Natasha shrieked with rage, apparently aware that she’d missed her opportunity, and then the door slammed open to reveal Steve and an imprint of Leota, looking wide-eyed and surprised.  Yelena was apparently not ready to give up, though, because she snarled once more and then suddenly Natasha’s body was crumpling towards the floor, a red ball of light rising up out of her chest and speeding towards Sam.

He braced himself for the impact, hoping that being ready for it would give him just enough control to get out the window before she took complete control.  The light slammed into his chest, and he started to move for the window, but then something strange felt like it snapped inside of him and suddenly a bright white light was pulsing out of his chest, forcing the red orb out with it.  He watched, kind of awed and kind of terrified, as a high-pitched, pain-filled scream tore through the room like a thundering echo, and the white light methodically pulled the red light apart until it disintegrated into nothing.

Then, both Steve and Bucky were collapsing as well, two balls of light rising up from their chests, one purple and one dark blue.  Sam hardly paid them any mind, though, rushing over to check on his friends.  They were all breathing, and their pulses seemed steady, so he breathed a sigh of relief.  They would probably be okay.

“I don’t understand,” Fitz spoke up. “What happened? How did he break the curse?”

“I told her she would be destroyed by love she didn’t understand,” Leota said quietly, her eyes drifting closed as she shook her head. “I did not mean it quite so literally…”

“She was destroyed by love?” Skye asked, frowning. “But I don’t understand.  One moment she was going to possess Sam, and then…”

“Sam loves his friends so much he was willing to die to save them.  That level of self-sacrifice is not something a selfish murderer like Yelena could understand,” Leota explained. “Or me, I suppose.  I was so obsessed with hurting her, with ending her life, I never let myself think that there could possibly be an alternative.  For that, I am sorry.”

“Hey, it’s cool,” Sam shrugged her off. “I’m just glad my friends are all okay.”

He looked up at the purple and blue balls of light, which were swirling around each other at an increasingly frenzied pace, and then down at Natasha when she groaned and opened her eyes.  She looked around the room, cataloguing everything quickly, and then squeezed her eyes shut again and let out a shuddering, dry sob.

“Hey,” he whispered to her, leaning down and stroking her hair. “It’s all okay, Nat.  You’re safe.  Steve and Bucky are safe.”

“I was going to kill him,” she said numbly. “I was going to kill Bucky.”

“It wasn’t you,” Sam assured her. “And Bucky is fine.”

“There was someone else,” Natasha told him. “In my head.  I tried to make her stop and let me go, but she wouldn’t.”

“Me too,” Bucky said, sitting up with a wince, holding his hand to his head as if warding off a headache. “I don’t think he knew I was there.  I kept trying to call to him, to get him to hear me…”

“How’s Steve?” Natasha asked suddenly, sitting up as well. “Is he all right?”

As if in answer, Steve groaned lowly, and they all moved over to check on him.  They were all leaning over and staring down at him when he opened his eyes, and he recoiled in surprise, smacking his head against the hardwood floor.  He cussed under his breath, and Natasha and Bucky leaned down to coo at and coddle him, helping him sit up and making sure he was okay.  

Suddenly, there was a bright flash of light from across the room that drew all of their attention.  The colored spheres of light had disappeared to be replaced by two men, ones that Sam recognized from the visions Leota had shown him.  Clint, the blonde one, was wearing a blood-stained tuxedo, slashed open by knife marks in the chest.  He made a punched-out, wounded noise when he saw the brunet man, and he reached out to touch gently at the noose hanging from his neck, like he was worried that the rope itself might hurt him just its mere presence.

“Clint,” Phil breathed, reaching out and grabbing the other man up in a tight hug, burying his face in his shoulder. “Oh Clint.”

“I’m sorry,” Clint was saying. “I’m so sorry. She hurt you.  I let her hurt you.”

“I’m okay,” Phil promised him, which was clearly a lie since they were both dead. “We’re okay.”

“It’s been so long,” Clint said. “I didn’t know, until now, but it has been so long.  I’ve missed you.”

“I missed you too,” Phil whispered. Neither of them seemed to noticed that anyone else was in the room, too absorbed in seeing each other for the first time in over a hundred years. “But we’re together now.  And I’ll never be apart from you again.”

“Never,” Clint agreed. “I love you, Phil.  I love you so much.”

“I love you, too,” Phil returned in a broken whisper, and then they were kissing passionately, holding on tight to each other like they were afraid of being torn apart once again.  They began to glow brighter and brighter then, until they became a single, formless pillar shooting up through the ceiling and presumably outside.

“Thank you,” Skye said quietly, and when Sam turned to look at her, he saw that she was also becoming a formless pillar of light, along with Jemma, Fitz, and even Madame Leota in her crystal ball.  Outside, he could see more light blasting up from the graveyard, hundreds of beams lighting up and joining together until it was so bright he had to close his eyes and shield his face.

When the light finally died down enough that he couldn’t see it through his squeezed shut eyelids, he looked around again, only to find that the room was empty but for him and his friends.  Through the window, he could see the sky turning orange and pink as the sun started to peek up over the horizon.  They all looked around at each other and the rest of the room, like they were waiting for something else horrifying to come at them.

When nothing did, Sam heaved a wsigh and threw himself at his friends, pulling them into a huge, awkward group hug.  He kissed all of them, on any parts of their faces that he could reach, pathetically grateful that they were all alive and together and relatively unharmed.  They hugged him back just as tightly, holding on to each other for much longer than social norms dictated.  Then again, social norms had no basic etiquette for surviving a killer ghost possession.

When they finally pulled apart, Sam looked them all seriously in the face and then said, slowly and deliberately, “I fucking told you!”

They all groaned loudly and waved him off, heading for the exits.

“Fuck you guys, you don’t get to wave this off! Killer ghosts are totally a thing and I just saved all your asses.  You owe me like, at least five dinners.  At least!”

He continued to heckle them all the way down the hill, loud and exuberant and so very relieved.  They didn’t look back as they left the Barton Manor on the hill behind them, assured that it was at peace for the first time in over a hundred years.

**Author's Note:**

> I tried to come up with all the tags I could think of, but tbh I kind of suck at tagging things because I get too excited about posting and get impatient. So if I missed anything you think is important, please let me know. If I didn't, please leave a comment anyway. I'm always a slut for comments.


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